HAROLD  L.   LEUPP 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

DAVIS 


HISTORICAL   ESSAYS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO 
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THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


HISTORICAL    ESSAYS 


BY 

JAMES  FORD  RHODES,  LL.D.,  D.Lirr. 

AUTHOR   OF   THE    HISTORY   OF   THE    UNITED   STATES   FROM   THE 

COMPROMISE   OF   1850   TO   THE    FINAL   RESTORATION   OF 

HOME   RULE   AT  THE   SOUTH   IN   1877 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1909 

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LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


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BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  December,  1909. 


Norton oti  $3rrs9 

J.  8.  Cashing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

IN  offering  to  the  public  this  volume  of  Essays,  all  but 
two  of  which  have  been  read  at  various  places  on  different 
occasions,  I  am  aware  that  there  is  some  repetition  in  ideas 
and  illustrations,  but,  as  the  dates  of  their  delivery  and 
previous  publication  are  indicated,  I  am  letting  them  stand 
substantially  as  they  were  written  and  delivered. 

I  am  indebted  to  my  son,  Daniel  P.  Rhodes,  for  a  lit 
erary  revision  of  these  Essays;  and  I  have  to  thank  the 
editors  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  of  Scribner's  Magazine, 
and  of  the  Century  Magazine  for  leave  to  reprint  the  arti 
cles  which  have  already  appeared  in  their  periodicals. 

BOSTON,  November,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.     HISTORY .1 

President's  Inaugural  Address,  American  Historical  Associa 
tion,  Boston,  December  27,  1899;  printed  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  of  February,  1900. 

II.     CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY      ...      25 

Address  delivered  at  the  Meeting  of  the  American  Historical 
Association  in  Detroit,  December,  1900. 

III.  THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN 47 

Lecture  read  before  the  History  Club  of  Harvard  University, 
April  27,  1908,  and  at  Yale,  Columbia,  and  Western  Eeserve 
Universities. 

IV.  NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES         ...      81 

A  Paper  read  before  the  American  Historical  Association  in 
Washington  on  December  29,  1908 ;  printed  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  of  May,  1909. 

V.  SPEECH  PREPARED  FOR  THE  COMMENCEMENT  DINNER 
AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY,  JUNE  26,  1901.  (NOT 
DELIVERED)  ........  99 

VI.    EDWARD  GIBBON 105 

Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University,  April  6, 1908,  and  printed 
in  Scribner's  Magazine  of  June,  1909. 

VII.    SAMUEL  EAWSON  GARDINER 141 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at 
the  March  Meeting  of  1902,  and  printed  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  of  May,  1902. 

VIII.    WILLIAM  E.  H.  LECKY 151 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at 
the  November  Meeting  of  1903. 

IX.     SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE         .        .        .        ...    159 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at 
the  November  Meeting  of  1907. 
vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

X.    JOHN  KICHABD  GREEN 169 

Address  at  a  Gathering  of  Historians  on  June  5,  1909,  to 
mark  the  Placing  of  a  Tablet  in  the  Inner  Quadrangle  of 
Jesus  College,  Oxford,  to  the  Memory  of  John  Richard 
Green. 

XI.     EDWARD  L.  PIERCE 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
at  the  October  Meeting  of  1897. 

XII.    JACOB  D.  Cox 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
at  the  October  Meeting  of  1900. 

XIII.  EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
at  the  March  Meeting  of  1908. 

XIV.  THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE 

An  Essay  printed  in  Scribner's  Magazine  of  February,  1903. 
XV.  A  REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION 
Address  delivered  at  the  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Graduate 
School  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  Harvard  University,  on  Octo 
ber  8,  1908  ;  printed  in  the  Century  Magazine  for  October, 
1909. 

XVI.     EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN        .        .        .        . 

Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University,  April  13, 1908 ;  printed 
in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  September,  1908. 

XVII.     WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA? 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
at  the  November  Meeting  of  1901,  and  printed  in  the 
American  Historical  Review  of  April,  1902. 

XVIII.     A  NEW  ESTIMATE  OF  CROMWELL      .... 

A  Paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society 
at  the  January  Meeting  of  1898,  and  printed  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  of  June,  1898. 

INDEX 325 


175 


183 


189 


201 


243 


265 


299 


315 


HISTORY 

President's  Inaugural  Address,  American  Historical  Association, 
Boston,  December  27,  1899 ;  printed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of 
February,  1900. 


HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

HISTORY  1 

MY  theme  is  history.  It  is  an  old  subject,  which  has 
been  discoursed  about  since  Herodotus,  and  I  should  be 
vain  indeed  if  I  flattered  myself  that  I  could  say  aught 
new  concerning  the  methods  of  writing  it,  when  this  has 
for  so  long  a  period  engaged  the  minds  of  so  many  gifted 
men.  Yet  to  a  sympathetic  audience,  to  people  who  love 
history,  there  is  always  the  chance  that  a  fresh  treatment 
may  present  the  commonplaces  in  some  different  combina 
tion,  and  augment  for  the  moment  an  interest  which  is 
perennial. 

Holding  a  brief  for  history  as  do  I  your  representative, 
let  me  at  once  concede  that  it  is  not  the  highest  form  of 
intellectual  endeavor;  let  us  at  once  agree  that  it  were 
better  that  all  the  histories  ever  written  were  burned  than 
for  the  world  to  lose  Homer  and  Shakespeare.  Yet  as  it 
is  generally  true  that  an  advocate  rarely  admits  anything 
without  qualification,  I  should  not  be  loyal  to  my  client 
did  I  not  urge  that  Shakespeare  was  historian  as  well  as 
poet.  We  all  prefer  his  Antony  and  Cleopatra  and  Julius 
Caesar  to  the  Lives  in  North's  Plutarch  which  furnished 
him  his  materials.  The  history  is  in  substance  as  true  as 
Plutarch,  the  dramatic  force  greater;  the  language  is  bet 
ter  than  that  of  Sir  Thomas  North,  who  himself  did  a 
remarkable  piece  of  work  when  he  gave  his  country  a 

1  President's  Inaugural  Address,  American  Historical  Association,  Boston, 
December  27,  1899;  printed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of  February,  1900. 
B  1 


2  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

classic  by  Englishing  a  French  version  of  the  stories  of  the 
Greek.  It  is  true  as  Macaulay  wrote,  the  historical  plays 
of  Shakespeare  have  superseded  history.  When  we  think 
of  Henry  V.  it  is  of  Prince  Hal,  the  boon  companion  of 
Falstaff,  who  spent  his  youth  in  brawl  and  riot,  and  then 
became  a  sober  and  duty-loving  king;  and  our  idea  of 
Richard  III.  is  a  deceitful,  dissembling,  cruel  wretch  who 
knew  no  touch  of  pity,  a  bloody  tyrant  who  knew  no  law 
of  God  or  man. 

The  Achilles  of  Homer  was  a  very  living  personage  to 
Alexander.  How  happy  he  was,  said  the  great  general, 
when  he  visited  Troy,  "in  having  while  he  lived  so  faithful 
a  friend,  and  when  he  was  dead  so  famous  a  poet  to  pro 
claim  his  actions "  !  In  our  century,  as  more  in  conso 
nance  with  society  under  the  regime  of  contract,  when 
force  has  largely  given  way  to  craft,  we  feel  in  greater 
sympathy  with  Ulysses.  "The  one  person  I  would  like 
to  have  met  and  talked  with,"  Froude  used  to  say,  "was 
Ulysses.  How  interesting  it  would  be  to  have  his  opinion 
on  universal  suffrage,  and  on  a  House  of  Parliament  where 
Thersites  is  listened  to  as  patiently  as  the  king  of  men !" 

We  may  also  concede  that,  in  the  realm  of  intellectual 
endeavor,  the  natural  and  physical  sciences  should  have 
the  precedence  of  history.  The  present  is  more  important 
than  the  past,  and  those  sciences  which  contribute  to  our 
comfort,  place  within  the  reach  of  the  laborer  and  me 
chanic  as  common  necessaries  what  would  have  been  the 
highest  luxury  to  the  Roman  emperor  or  to  the  king  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  contribute  to  health  and  the  preservation 
of  life,  and  by  the  development  of  railroads  make  possible 
such  a  gathering  as  this,  —  these  sciences,  we  cheerfully 
admit,  outrank  our  modest  enterprise,  which,  in  the  words 
of  Herodotus,  is  "to  preserve  from  decay  the  remembrance 


HISTORY  3 

of  what  men  have  done."  It  may  be  true,  as  a  geologist 
once  said,  in  extolling  his  study  at  the  expense  of  the 
humanities,  " Rocks  do  not  lie,  although  men  do;"  yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  historic  sense,  which  during  our  cen 
tury  has  diffused  itself  widely,  has  invaded  the  domain  of 
physical  science.  If  you  are  unfortunate  enough  to  be  ill, 
and  consult  a  doctor,  he  expatiates  on  the  history  of  your 
disease.  It  was  once  my  duty  to  attend  the  Commence 
ment  exercises  of  a  technical  school,  when  one  of  the  grad 
uates  had  a  thesis  on  bridges.  As  he  began  by  telling 
how  they  were  built  in  Julius  Caesar's  time,  and  tracing 
at  some  length  the  development  of  the  art  during  the 
period  of  the  material  prosperity  of  the  Roman  Empire,  he 
had  little  time  and  space  left  to  consider  their  construc 
tion  at  the  present  day.  One  of  the  most  brilliant  sur 
geons  I  ever  knew,  the  originator  of  a  number  of  important 
surgical  methods,  who,  being  physician  as  well,  was  re 
markable  in  his  expedients  for  saving  life  when  called  to 
counsel  in  grave  and  apparently  hopeless  cases,  desired  to 
write  a  book  embodying  his  discoveries  and  devices,  but 
said  that  the  feeling  was  strong  within  him  that  he  must 
begin  his  work  with  an  account  of  medicine  in  Egypt,  and 
trace  its  development  down  to  our  own  time.  As  he  was 
a  busy  man  in  his  profession,  he  lacked  the  leisure  to  make 
the  preliminary  historical  study,  and  his  book  was  never 
written.  Men  of  affairs,  who,  taking  "the  present  time 
by  the  top,"  are  looked  upon  as  devoted  to  the  physical 
and  mechanical  sciences,  continually  pay  tribute  to  our  art. 
President  Garfield,  on  his  deathbed,  asked  one  of  his  most 
trusted  Cabinet  advisers,  in  words  that  become  pathetic  as 
one  thinks  of  the  opportunities  destroyed  by  the  assassin's 
bullet,  " Shall  I  live  in  history?"  A  clever  politician,  who 
knew  more  of  ward  meetings,  caucuses,  and  the  machinery 


4  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

of  conventions  than  he  did  of  history  books,  and  who  was 
earnest  for  the  renomination  of  President  Arthur  in  1884, 
said  to  me,  in  the  way  of  clinching  his  argument,  "That 
administration  will  live  in  history."  So  it  was,  according 
to  Amyot,  in  the  olden  time.  "Whensoever,"  he  wrote, 
"the  right  sage  and  virtuous  Emperor  of  Rome,  Alexander 
Severus,  was  to  consult  of  any  matter  of  great  importance, 
whether  it  concerned  war  or  government,  he  always  called 
such  to  counsel  as  were  reported  to  be  well  seen  in  histories." 
"What, "  demanded  Cicero  of  Atticus,  "will  history  say  of  me 
six  hundred  years  hence?" 

Proper  concessions  being  made  to  poetry  and  the  physical 
sciences,  our  place  in  the  field  remains  secure.  Moreover, 
we  live  in  a  fortunate  age ;  for  was  there  ever  so  propitious  a 
time  for  writing  history  as  in  the  last  forty  years?  There 
has  been  a  general  acquisition  of  the  historic  sense.  The 
methods  of  teaching  history  have  so  improved  that  they  may 
be  called  scientific.  Even  as  the  chemist  and  physicist,  we 
talk  of  practice  in  the  laboratory.  Most  biologists  will  accept 
Haeckel's  designation  of  "the  last  forty  years  as  the  age  of 
Darwin,"  for  the  theory  of  evolution  is  firmly  established. 
The  publication  of  the  Origin  of  Species,  in  1859,  converted 
it  from  a  poet's  dream  and  philosopher's  speculation  to  a 
well-demonstrated  scientific  theory.  Evolution,  heredity, 
environment,  have  become  household  words,  and  their 
application  to  history  has  influenced  every  one  who  has 
had  to  trace  the  development  of  a  people,  the  growth  of  an 
institution,  or  the  establishment  of  a  cause.  Other  scientific 
theories  and  methods  have  affected  physical  science  as 
potently,  but  none  has  entered  so  vitally  into  the  study  of 
man.  What  hitherto  the  eye  of  genius  alone  could  per 
ceive  may  become  the  common  property  of  every  one  who 
cares  to  read  a  dozen  books.  But  with  all  of  our  advantages, 


HISTORY  5 

do  we  write  better  history  than  was  written  before  the  year 
1859,  which  we  may  call  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
old  and  the  new?  If  the  English,  German,  and  American 
historical  scholars  should  vote  as  to  who  were  the  two  best 
historians,  I  have  little  doubt  that  Thucydides  and  Tacitus 
would  have  a  pretty  large  majority.  If  they  were  asked 
to  name  a  third  choice,  it  would  undoubtedly  lie  between 
Herodotus  and  Gibbon.  At  the  meeting  of  this  association 
in  Cleveland,  when  methods  of  historical  teaching  were  under 
discussion,  Herodotus  and  Thucydides,  but  no  others,  were 
mentioned  as  proper  object  lessons.  What  are  the  merits 
of  Herodotus  ?  Accuracy  in  details,  as  we  understand  it, 
was  certainly  not  one  of  them.  Neither  does  he  sift  critically 
his  facts,  but  intimates  that  he  will  not  make  a  positive 
decision  in  the  case  of  conflicting  testimony.  "For  myself/' 
he  wrote,  "my  duty  is  to  report  all  that  is  said,  but  I  am  not 
obliged  to  believe  it  all  alike,  —  a  remark  which  may  be 
understood  to  apply  to  my  whole  history."  He  had  none  of 
the  wholesome  skepticism  which  we  deem  necessary  in  the 
weighing  of  historical  evidence;  on  the  contrary,  he  is 
frequently  accused  of  credulity.  Nevertheless,  Percy  Gard 
ner  calls  his  narrative  nobler  than  that  of  Thucydides,  and 
Mahaffy  terms  it  an  "incomparable  history."  "The  truth 
is,"  wrote  Macaulay  in  his  diary,  when  he  was  forty-nine 
years  old,  "I  admire  no  historians  much  except  Herodotus, 
Thucydides,  and  Tacitus."  Sir  M.  E.  Grant  Duff  devoted 
his  presidential  address  of  1895,  before  the  Royal  Historical 
Society,  wholly  to  Herodotus,  ending  with  the  conclusion, 
"The  fame  of  Herodotus,  which  has  a  little  waned,  will 
surely  wax  again."  Whereupon  the  London  Times  devoted 
a  leader  to  the  subject.  "We  are  concerned,"  it  said,  "to 
hear,  on  authority  so  eminent,  that  one  of  the  most  delightful 
writers  of  antiquity  has  a  little  waned  of  late  in  favor  with  the 


6  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

world.  If  this  indeed  be  the  case,  so  much  the  worse  for 
the  world.  .  .  .  When  Homer  and  Dante  and  Shakespeare 
are  neglected,  then  will  Herodotus  cease  to  be  read." 

There  we  have  the  secret  of  his  hold  upon  the  minds  of 
men.  He  knows  how  to  tell  a  story,  said  Professor  Hart, 
in  the  discussion  previously  referred  to,  in  Cleveland.  He 
has  " an  epic  unity  of  plan,"  writes  Professor  Jebb.  Herodo 
tus  has  furnished  delight  to  all  generations,  while  Polybius, 
more  accurate  and  painstaking,  a  learned  historian  and  a 
practical  statesman,  gathers  dust  on  the  shelf  or  is  read  as  a 
penance.  Nevertheless,  it  may  be  demonstrated  from  the 
historical  literature  of  England  of  our  century  that  literary 
style  and  great  power  of  narration  alone  will  not  give  a  man 
a  niche  in  the  temple  of  history.  Herodotus  showed  dili 
gence  and  honesty,  without  which  his  other  qualities  would 
have  failed  to  secure  him  the  place  he  holds  in  the  estimation 
of  historical  scholars. 

From  Herodotus  we  naturally  turn  to  Thucydides,  who  in 
the  beginning  charms  historical  students  by  his  impression 
of  the  seriousness  and  dignity  of  his  business.  History,  he 
writes,  will  be  "  found  profitable  by  those  who  desire  an 
exact  knowledge  of  the  past  as  a  key  to  the  future,  which  in 
all  human  probability  will  repeat  or  resemble  the  past.  My 
history  is  an  everlasting  possession,  not  a  prize  composition 
which  is  heard  and  forgotten."  Diligence,  accuracy,  love 
of  truth,  and  impartiality  are  merits  commonly  ascribed  to 
Thucydides,  and  the  internal  evidence  of  the  history  bears 
out  fully  the  general  opinion.  But,  in  my  judgment,  there 
is  a  tendency  to  rate,  in  the  comparative  estimates,  the 
Athenian  too  high,  for  the  possession  of  these  qualities ;  for 
certainly  some  modern  writers  have  possessed  all  of  these 
merits  in  an  eminent  degree.  When  Jowett  wrote  in  the  pref 
ace  to  his  translation,  Thucydides  " stands  absolutely  alone 


HISTORY  7 

among  the  historians,  not  only  of  Hellas,  but  of  the  world,  in 
his  impartiality  and  love  of  truth/7  he  was  unaware  that  a 
son  of  his  own  university  was  writing  the  history  of  a  momen 
tous  period  of  his  own  country,  in  a  manner  to  impugn  the 
correctness  of  that  statement.  When  the  Jowett  Thucydides 
appeared,  Samuel  R.  Gardiner  had  published  eight  volumes 
of  his  history,  though  he  had  not  reached  the  great  Civil  War, 
and  his  reputation,  which  has  since  grown  with  a  cumulative 
force,  was  not  fully  established ;  but  I  have  now  no  hesitation 
in  saying  that  the  internal  evidence  demonstrates  that  in 
impartiality  and  love  of  truth  Gardiner  is  the  peer  of  Thu 
cydides.  From  the  point  of  view  of  external  evidence,  the 
case  is  even  stronger  for  Gardiner;  he  submits  to  a  harder 
test.  That  he  has  been  able  to  treat  so  stormy,  so  contro 
verted,  and  so  well  known  a  period  as  the  seventeenth 
century  in  England,  with  hardly  a  question  of  his  im 
partiality,  is  a  wonderful  tribute.  In  fact,  in  an  excellent 
review  of  his  work  I  have  seen  him  criticised  for  being  too 
impartial.  On  the  other  hand,  Grote  thinks  that  he  has 
found  Thucydides  in  error,  —  in  the  long  dialogue  between 
the  Athenian  representatives  and  the  Melians.  "This  dia 
logue,"  Grote  writes,  "  can  hardly  represent  what  actually 
passed,  except  as  to  a  few  general  points  which  the  historian 
has  followed  out  into  deductions  and  illustrations,  thus 
dramatizing  the  given  situation  in  a  powerful  and  character 
istic  manner."  Those  very  words  might  characterize  Shake 
speare's  account  of  the  assassination  of  Julius  Caesar,  and  his 
reproduction  of  the  speeches  of  Brutus  and  Mark  Antony. 
Compare  the  relation  in  Plutarch  with  the  third  act  of  the 
tragedy,  and  see  how,  in  his  amplification  of  the  story,  Shake 
speare  has  remained  true  to  the  essential  facts  of  the  time. 
Plutarch  gives  no  account  of  the  speeches  of  Brutus  and 
Mark  Antony,  confining  himself  to  an  allusion  to  the  one, 


8  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

and  a  reference  to  the  other ;  but  Appian  of  Alexandria,  in 
his  history,  has  reported  them.  The  speeches  in  Appian 
lack  the  force  which  they  have  in  Shakespeare,  nor  do  they 
seemingly  fit  into  the  situation  as  well.  I  have  adverted 
to  this  criticism  of  Grote,  not  that  I  love  Thucydides  less, 
but  that  I  love  Shakespeare  more.  For  my  part,  the  histo 
rian's  candid  acknowledgment  in  the  beginning  has  con 
vinced  me  of  the  essential  —  not  the  literal  —  truth  of  his 
accounts  of  speeches  and  dialogues.  "As  to  the  speeches/' 
wrote  the  Athenian,  "which  were  made  either  before  or 
during  the  war,  it  was  hard  for  me,  and  for  others  who 
reported  them  to  me,  to  recollect 'the  exact  words.  I  have 
therefore  put  into  the  mouth  of  each  speaker  the  sentiments 
proper  to  the  occasion,  expressed  as  I  thought  he  would  be 
likely  to  express  them ;  while  at  the  same  time  I  endeavored, 
as  nearly  as  I  could,  to  give  the  general  purport  of  what 
was  actually  said."  That  is  the  very  essence  of  candor. 
But  be  the  historian  as  chaste  as  ice,  as  pure  as  snow,  he 
shall  not  escape  calumny.  Mahaffy  declares  that,  "although 
all  modern  historians  quote  Thucydides  with  more  confidence 
than  they  would  quote  the  Gospels,"  the  Athenian  has 
exaggerated;  he  is  one-sided,  partial,  misleading,  dry,  and 
surly.  Other  critics  agree  with  Mahaffy  that  he  has  been 
unjust  to  Cleon,  and  has  screened  Nicias  from  blame  that  was 
his  due  for  defective  generalship. 

We  approach  Tacitus  with  respect.  We  rise  from  reading 
his  Annals,  his  History,  and  his  Germany  with  reverence. 
We  know  that  we  have  been  in  the  society  of  a  gentleman 
who  had  a  high  standard  of  morality  and  honor.  We  feel 
that  our  guide  was  a  serious  student,  a  solid  thinker,  and  a 
man  of  the  world;  that  he  expressed  his  opinions  and  de 
livered  his  judgments  with  a  remarkable  freedom  from 
prejudice.  He  draws  us  to  him  with  sympathy.  He 


HISTORY  9 

sounds  the  same  mournful  note  which  we  detect  in  Thucyd- 
ides.  Tacitus  deplores  the  folly  and  dissoluteness  of  the 
rulers  of  his  nation ;  he  bewails  the  misfortunes  of  his  country. 
The  merits  we  ascribe  to  Thucydides,  diligence,  accuracy, 
love  of  truth,  impartiality,  are  his.  The  desire  to  quote 
from  Tacitus  is  irresistible.  "The  more  I  meditate,"  he 
writes,  "on  the  events  of  ancient  and  modern  times,  the  more 
I  am  struck  with  the  capricious  uncertainty  which  mocks 
the  calculations  of  men  in  all  their  transactions."  Again : 
"Possibly  there  is  in  all  things  a  kind  of  cycle,  and  there  may 
be  moral  revolutions  just  as  there  are  changes  of  seasons." 
"Commonplaces!"  sneer  the  scientific  historians.  True 
enough,  but  they  might  not  have  been  commonplaces  if 
Tacitus  had  not  uttered  them,  and  his  works  had  not  been 
read  and  re-read  until  they  have  become  a  common  possession 
of  historical  students.  From  a  thinker  who  deemed  the  time 
"out  of  joint,"  as  Tacitus  obviously  did,  and  who,  had  he  not 
possessed  great  strength  of  mind  and  character,  might 
have  lapsed  into  a  gloomy  pessimism,  what  noble  words  are 
these :  "This  I  regard  as  history's  highest  function :  to  let  no 
worthy  action  be  uncommemorated,  and  to  hold  out  the 
reprobation  of  posterity  as  a  terror  to  evil  words  and  deeds." 
The  modesty  of  the  Roman  is  fascinating.  "Much  of  what 
I  have  related,"  he  says,  "and  shall  have  to  relate,  may 
perhaps,  I  am  aware,  seem  petty  trifles  to  record.  .  .  .  My 
labors  are  circumscribed  and  unproductive  of  renown  to 
the  author."  How  agreeable  to  place  in  contrast  with  this 
the  prophecy  of  his  friend,  the  younger  Pliny,  in  a  letter  to 
the  historian :  "I  augur  —  nor  does  my  augury  deceive  me  — 
that  your  histories  will  be  immortal :  hence  all  the  more  do 
I  desire  to  find  a  place  in  them." 

To  my  mind,  one  of  the  most  charming  things  in  historical 
literature  is  the  praise  which  one  great  historian  bestows 


10  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

upon  another.  Gibbon  speaks  of  "the  discerning  eye" 
and  "  masterly  pencil  of  Tacitus,  —  the  first  of  historians 
who  applied  the  science  of  philosophy  to  the  study  of  facts," 
"  whose  writings  will  instruct  the  last  generations  of  man 
kind."  He  has  produced  an  immortal  work,  "  every  sentence 
of  which  is  pregnant  with  the  deepest  observations  and 
most  lively  images."  I  mention  Gibbon,  for  it  is  more  than 
a  strong  probability  that  in  diligence,  accuracy,  and  love  of 
truth  he  is  the  equal  of  Tacitus.  A  common  edition  of  the 
History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  is 
that  with  notes  by  Dean  Milman,  Guizot,  and  Dr.  Smith. 
Niebuhr,  Villemain,  and  Sir  James  Mackintosh  are  each 
drawn  upon  for  criticism.  Did  ever  such  a  fierce  light  beat 
upon  a  history  ?  With  what  keen  relish  do  the  annotators 
pounce  upon  mistakes  or  inaccuracies,  and  in  that  portion  of 
the  work  which  ends  with  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire 
how  few  do  they  find !  Would  Tacitus  stand  the  supreme 
test  better?  There  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  only  one  case  in 
which  we  may  compare  his  Annals  with  an  original  record. 
On  bronze  tablets  found  at  Lyons  in  the  sixteenth  century 
is  engraved  the  same  speech  made  by  the  Emperor  Claudius 
to  the  Senate  that  Tacitus  reports.  "  Tacitus  and  the  tab 
lets,"  writes  Professor  Jebb,  "  disagree  hopelessly  in  lan 
guage  and  in  nearly  all  the  detail,  but  agree  in  the  general 
line  of  argument."  Gibbon's  work  has  richly  deserved  its 
life  of  more  than  one  hundred  years,  a  period  which  I  believe 
no  other  modern  history  has  endured.  Niebuhr,  in  a  course 
of  lectures  at  Bonn,  in  1829,  said  that  Gibbon's  "work  will 
never  be  excelled."  At  the  Gibbon  Centenary  Commemora 
tion  in  London,  in  1894,  many  distinguished  men,  among 
whom  the  Church  had  a  distinct  representation,  gathered 
together  to  pay  honor  to  him  who,  in  the  words  of  Frederic 
Harrison,  had  written  "the  most  perfect  book  that  Eng- 


HISTORY  11 

lish  prose  (outside  its  fiction)  possesses."  Mommsen,  pre 
vented  by  age  and  work  from  being  present,  sent  his  tribute. 
No  one,  he  said,  would  in  the  future  be  able  to  read  the  his 
tory  of  the  Roman  Empire  unless  he  read  Edward  Gibbon. 
The  Times,  in  a  leader  devoted  to  the  subject,  apparently 
expressed  the  general  voice:  "'Back  to  Gibbon'  is  already, 
both  here  and  among  the  scholars  of  Germany  and  France, 
the  watchword  of  the  younger  historians." 

I  have  now  set  forth  certain  general  propositions  which, 
with  time  for  adducing  the  evidence  in  detail,  might,  I 
think,  be  established :  that,  in  the  consensus  of  learned 
people,  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  stand  at  the  head  of  histo 
rians  ;  and  that  it  is  not  alone  their  accuracy,  love  of  truth, 
and  impartiality  which  entitle  them  to  this  preeminence 
since  Gibbon  and  Gardiner  among  the  moderns  possess 
equally  the  same  qualities.  What  is  it,  then,  that  makes 
these  men  supreme?  In  venturing  a  solution  of  this  ques 
tion,  I  confine  myself  necessarily  to  the  English  translations 
of  the  Greek  and  Latin  authors.  We  have  thus  a  common 
denominator  of  language,  and  need  not  take  into  account 
the  unrivaled  precision  and  terseness  of  the  Greek  and  the 
force  and  clearness  of  the  Latin.  It  seems  to  me  that  one 
special  merit  of  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  is  their  compressed 
narrative,  —  that  they  have  related  so  many  events  and  put 
so  much  meaning  in  so  few  words.  Our  manner  of  writing 
history  is  really  curious.  The  histories  which  cover  long 
periods  of  time  are  brief;  those  which  have  to  do  with  but 
a  few  years  are  long.  The  works  of  Thucydides  and  Tacitus 
are  not  like  our  compendiums  of  history,  which  merely  touch 
on  great  affairs,  since  want  of  space  precludes  any  elaboration. 
Tacitus  treats  of  a  comparatively  short  epoch,  Thucydides 
of  a  much  shorter  one :  both  histories  are  brief.  Thucydi 
des  and  Macaulay  are  examples  of  extremes.  The  Athe- 


12  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

nian  tells  the  story  of  twenty-four  years  in  one  volume; 
the  Englishman  takes  nearly  five  volumes  of  equal  size  for 
his  account  of  seventeen  years.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
Thucydides  tells  us  as  much  that  is  worth  knowing  as 
Macaulay.  One  is  concise,  the  other  is  not.  It  is  impossible 
to  paraphrase  the  fine  parts  of  Thucydides,  but  Macaulay 
lends  himself  readily  to  such  an  exercise.  The  thought  of 
the  Athenian  is  so  close  that  he  has  got  rid  of  all  redundancies 
of  expression:  hence  the  effort  to  reproduce  his  ideas  in 
other  words  fails.  The  account  of  the  plague  in  Athens 
has  been  studied  and  imitated,  and  every  imitation  falls 
short  of  the  original  not  only  in  vividness  but  in  brevity. 
It  is  the  triumph  of  art  that  in  this  and  in  other  splendid 
portions  we  wish  more  had  been  told.  As  the  French  say, 
"the  secret  of  wearying  is  to  say  all,"  and  this  the  Athenian 
thoroughly  understood.  Between  our  compendiums,  which 
tell  too  little,  and  our  long  general  histories,  which  tell  too 
much,  are  Thucydides  and  Tacitus. 

Again,  it  is  a  common  opinion  that  our  condensed  histo 
ries  lack  life  and  movement.  This  is  due  in  part  to  their 
being  written  generally  from  a  study  of  second-hand  — 
not  original  —  materials.  Those  of  the  Athenian  and  the 
Roman  are  mainly  the  original. 

I  do  not  think,  however,  that  we  may  infer  that  we  have 
a  much  greater  mass  of  materials,  and  thereby  excuse  our 
modern  prolixity.  In  written  documents,  of  course,  we  ex 
ceed  the  ancients,  for  we  have  been  flooded  with  these  by 
the  art  of  printing.  Yet  any  one  who  has  investigated  any 
period  knows  how  the  same  facts  are  told  over  and  over 
again,  in  different  ways,  by  various  writers;  and  if  one  can 
get  beyond  the  mass  of  verbiage  and  down  to  the  really 
significant  original  material,  what  a  simplification  of  ideas 
there  is,  what  a  lightening  of  the  load !  I  own  that  this 


HISTORY  13 

process  of  reduction  is  painful,  and  thereby  our  work  is  made 
more  difficult  than  that  of  the  ancients.  A  historian  will 
adapt  himself  naturally  to  the  age  in  which  he  lives,  and 
Thucydidesvmade  use  of  the  matter  that  was  at  his  hand. 
"Of  the  events  of  the  war,"  he  wrote,  "I  have  not  ventured 
to  speak  from  any  chance  information,  nor  according  to  any 
notion  of  my  own ;  I  have  described  nothing  but  what  I 
either  saw  myself,  or  learned  from  others  of  whom  I  made 
the  most  careful  and  particular  inquiry.  The  task  was  a 
laborious  one,  because  eye-witnesses  of  the  same  occurrences 
gave  different  accounts  of  them,  as  they  remembered  or 
were  interested  in  the  actions  of  one  side  or  the  other."  His 
materials,  then,  were  what  he  saw  and  heard.  His  books 
and  his  manuscripts  were  living  men.  Our  distinguished 
military  historian,  John  C.  Ropes,  whose  untimely  death  we 
deplore,  might  have  written  his  history  from  the  same  sort 
of  materials ;  for  he  was  contemporary  with  our  Civil  War, 
and  followed  the  daily  events  with  intense  interest.  A 
brother  of  his  was  killed  at  Gettysburg,  and  he  had  many 
friends  in  the  army.  He  paid  at  least  one  memorable  visit 
to  Meade's  headquarters  in  the  field,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
war  had  a  mass  of  memories  and  impressions  of  the  great 
conflict.  He  never  ceased  his  inquiries;  he  never  lost  a 
chance  to  get  a  particular  account  from  those  who  took 
part  in  battles  or  campaigns ;  and  before  he  began  his  Story 
of  the  Civil  War,  he  too  could  have  said,  "I  made  the  most 
careful  and  particular  inquiry"  of  generals  and  officers  on 
both  sides,  and  of  men  in  civil  office  privy  to  the  great 
transactions.  His  knowledge  drawn  from  living  lips  was 
marvelous,  and  his  conversation,  when  he  poured  this  knowl 
edge  forth,  often  took  the  form  of  a  flowing  narrative  in  an 
animated  style.  While  there  are  not,  so  far  as  I  remember, 
any  direct  references  in  his  two  volumes  to  these  memories, 


14  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

or  to  memoranda  of  conversations  which  he  had  with  living 
actors  after  the  close  of  the  war  drama,  and  while  his  main 
authority  is  the  Official  Eecords  of  the  Union  and  Confeder 
ate  Armies,  —  which,  no  one  appreciated  better  than  he, 
were  unique  historical  materials,  —  nevertheless  this  per 
sonal  knowledge  trained  his  judgment  and  gave  color  to 
his  narrative. 

It  is  pretty  clear  that  Thucydides  spent  a  large  part  of  a 
life  of  about  threescore  years  and  ten  in  gathering  materials 
and  writing  his  history.  The  mass  of  facts  which  he  set 
down  or  stored  away  in  his  memory  must  have  been  enor 
mous.  He  was  a  man  of  business,  and  had  a  home  in 
Thrace  as  well  as  in  Athens,  traveling  probably  at  fairly 
frequent  intervals  between  the  two  places;  but  the  main 
portion  of  the  first  forty  years  of  his  life  was  undoubtedly 
spent  in  Athens,  where,  during  those  glorious  years  of  peace 
and  the  process  of  beautifying  the  city,  he  received  the  best 
education  a  man  could  get.  To  walk  about  the  city  and 
view  the  buildings  and  statues  was  both  directly  and  in 
sensibly  a  refining  influence.  As  Thucydides  himself,  in 
the  funeral  oration  of  Pericles,  said  of  the  works  which  the 
Athenian  saw  around  him,  "the  daily  delight  of  them 
banishes  gloom."  There  was  the  opportunity  to  talk  with  as 
good  conversers  as  the  world  has  ever  known;  and  he  un 
doubtedly  saw  much  of  the  men  who  were  making  history. 
There  was  the  great  theater  and  the  sublime  poetry.  In  a 
word,  the  life  of  Thucydides  was  adapted  to  the  gathering  of 
a  mass  of  historical  materials  of  the  best  sort ;  and  his  daily 
walk,  his  reading,  his  intense  thought,  gave  him  an  intel 
lectual  grasp  of  the  facts  he  has  so  ably  handled.  Of  course 
he  was  a  genius,  and  he  wrote  in  an  effective  literary  style ; 
but  seemingly  his  natural  parts  and  acquired  talents  are 
directed  to  this:  a  digestion  of  his  materials,  and  a  com- 


HISTORY  15 

pression  of  his  narrative  without  taking  the  vigor  out  of  his 
story  in  a  manner  I  believe  to  be  without  parallel.  He 
devoted  a  life  to  writing  a  volume.  His  years  after  the 
peace  was  broken,  his  career  as  a  general,  his  banishment 
and  enforced  residence  in  Thrace,  his  visit  to  the  countries 
of  the  Peloponnesian  allies  with  whom  Athens  was  at  war,  — 
all  these  gave  him  a  signal  opportunity  to  gather  materials, 
and  to  assimilate  them  in  the  gathering.  We  may  fancy 
him  looking  at  an  alleged  fact  on  all  sides,  and  turning  it  over 
and  over  in  his  mind ;  we  know  that  he  must  have  meditated 
long  on  ideas,  opinions,  and  events ;  and  the  result  is  a  brief, 
pithy  narrative.  Tradition  hath  it  that  Demosthenes  copied 
out  this  history  eight  times,  or  even  learned  it  by  heart. 
Chatham,  urging  the  removal  of  the  forces  from  Boston,  had 
reason  to  refer  to  the  history  of  Greece,  and,  that  he  might 
impress  it  upon  the  lords  that  he  knew  whereof  he  spoke, 
declared,  "I  have  read  Thucydides." 

Of  Tacitus  likewise  is  conciseness  a  well-known  merit. 
Living  in  an  age  of  books  and  libraries,  he  drew  more  from 
the  written  word  than  did  Thucydides;  and  his  method  of 
working,  therefore,  resembled  more  our  own.  These  are  com 
mon  expressions  of  his :  "It  is  related  by  most  of  the  writers 
of  those  times ;"  I  adopt  the  account  "in  which  the  authors 
are  agreed ;"  this  account  "agrees  with  those  of  the  other 
writers."  Relating  a  case  of  recklessness  of  vice  in  Messalina, 
he  acknowledges  that  it  will  appear  fabulous,  and  asserts 
his  truthfulness  thus :  "But  I  would  not  dress  up  my  narra 
tive  with  fictions,  to  give  it  an  air  of  marvel,  rather  than 
relate  what  has  been  stated  to  me  or  written  by  my  seniors." 
He  also  speaks  of  the  authority  of  tradition,  and  tells  what  he 
remembers  "to  have  heard  from  aged  men."  He  will  not 
paraphrase  the  eloquence  of  Seneca  after  he  had  his  veins 
opened,  because  the  very  words  of  the  philosopher  had  been 


16  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

published ;  but  when,  a  little  later,  Flavius  the  tribune  came 
to  die,  the  historian  gives  this  report  of  his  defiance  of  Nero. 
"I  hated  you,"  the  tribune  said  to  the  emperor;  "nor  had 
you  a  soldier  more  true  to  you  while  you  deserved  to  be  loved. 
I  began  to  hate  you  from  the  time  you  showed  yourself 
the  impious  murderer  of  your  mother  and  your  wife,  a 
charioteer,  a  stage-player,  an  incendiary."  "I  have  given 
the  very  words,"  Tacitus  adds,  " because  they  were  not, 
like  those  of  Seneca,  published,  though  the  rough  and  vig 
orous  sentiments  of  a  soldier  ought  to  be  no  less  known." 
Everywhere  we  see  in  Tacitus,  as  in  Thucydides,  a  dislike  of 
superfluous  detail,  a  closeness  of  thought,  a  compression  of 
language.  He  was  likewise  a  man  of  affairs,  but  his  life 
work  was  his  historical  writings,  which,  had  we  all  of  them, 
would  fill  probably  four  moderate-sized  octavo  volumes. 

To  sum  up,  then:  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  are  superior 
to  the  historians  who  have  written  in  our  century,  because, 
by  long  reflection  and  studious  method,  they  have  better 
digested  their  materials  and  compressed  their  narrative. 
Unity  in  narration  has  been  adhered  to  more  rigidly.  They 
stick  closer  to  their  subject.  They  are  not  allured  into  the 
fascinating  bypaths  of  narration,  which  are  so  tempting  to 
men  who  have  accumulated  a  mass  of  facts,  incidents,  and 
opinions.  One  reason  why  Macaulay  is  so  prolix  is  because 
he  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  treat  events  which  had 
a  picturesque  side  and  which  were  suited  to  his  literary 
style;  so  that,  as  John  Morley  says,  "in  many  portions  of 
his  too  elaborated  history  of  William  III.  he  describes  a 
large  number  of  events  about  which,  I  think,  no  sensible  man 
can  in  the  least  care  either  how  they  happened,  or  whether 
indeed  they  happened  at  all  or  not."  If  I  am  right  in  my 
supposition  that  Thucydides  and  Tacitus  had  a  mass  of 
materials,  they  showed  reserve  and  discretion  in  throwing  a 


HISTORY  17 

large  part  of  them  away,  as  not  being  necessary  or  important 
to  the  posterity  for  which  they  were  writing.  This  could 
only  be  the  result  of  a  careful  comparison  of  their  materials, 
and  of  long  meditation  on  their  relative  value.  I  suspect 
that  they  cared  little  whether  a  set  daily  task  was  accom 
plished  or  not;  for  if  you  propose  to  write  only  one  large 
volume  or  four  moderate-sized  volumes  in  a  lifetime,  art  is 
not  too  long  nor  is  life  too  short. 

Another  superiority  of  the  classical  historians,  as  I  reckon, 
arose  from  the  fact  that  they  wrote  what  was  practically 
contemporaneous  history.  Herodotus  was  born  484  B.C., 
and  the  most  important  and  accurate  part  of  his  history  is 
the  account  of  the  Persian  invasion  which  took  place  four 
years  later.  The  case  of  Thucydides  is  more  remarkable. 
Born  in  471  B.C.,  he  relates  the  events  which  happened 
between  435  and  411,  when  he  was  between  the  ages  of 
thirty-six  and  sixty.  Tacitus,  born  in  52  A.D.,  covered 
with  his  Annals  and  History  the  years  between  14  and  96. 
"  Herodotus  and  Thucydides  belong  to  an  age  in  which  the 
historian  draws  from  life  and  for  life,"  writes  Professor  Jebb. 
It  is  manifestly  easier  to  describe  a  life  you  know  than  one 
you  must  imagine,  which  is  what  you  must  do  if  you  aim  to 
relate  events  which  took  place  before  your  own  and  your 
father's  time.  In  many  treatises  which  have  been  written 
demanding  an  extraordinary  equipment  for  the  historian,  it 
is  generally  insisted  that  he  shall  have  a  fine  constructive 
imagination;  for  how  can  he  re-create  his  historic  period 
unless  he  live  in  it  ?  In  the  same  treatises  it  is  asserted  that 
contemporary  history  cannot  be  written  correctly,  for  im 
partiality  in  the  treatment  of  events  near  at  hand  is  im 
possible.  Therefore  the  canon  requires  the  quality  of  a 
great  poet,  and  denies  that  there  may  be  had  the  merit  of  a 
judge  in  a  country  where  there  are  no  great  poets,  but  where 


18  HISTORICAL   ESSAYS 

candid  judges  abound.  Does  not  the  common  rating  of 
Thucydides  and  Tacitus  refute  the  dictum  that  history  within 
the  memory  of  men  living  cannot  be  written  truthfully  and 
fairly?  Given,  then,  the  judicial  mind,  how  much  easier  to 
write  it !  The  rare  quality  of  a  poet's  imagination  is  no 
longer  necessary,  for  your  boyhood  recollections,  your 
youthful  experiences,  your  successes  and  failures  of  man 
hood,  the  grandfather's  tales,  the  parent's  recollections, 
the  conversation  in  society,  —  all  these  put  you  in  vital 
touch  with  the  life  you  seek  to  describe.  These  not  only 
give  color  and  freshness  to  the  vivifying  of  the  facts  you 
must  find  in  the  record,  but  they  are  in  a  way  materials 
themselves,  not  strictly  authentic,  but  of  the  kind  that  direct 
you  in  search  and  verification.  Not  only  is  no  extraordinary 
ability  required  to  write  contemporary  history,  but  the  labor 
of  the  historian  is  lightened,  and  Dryasdust  is  no  longer  his 
sole  guide.  The  funeral  oration  of  Pericles  is  pretty  nearly 
what  was  actually  spoken,  or  else  it  is  the  substance  of  the 
speech  written  out  in  the  historian's  own  words.  Its  in 
tensity  of  feeling  and  the  fitting  of  it  so  well  into  the  situation 
indicate  it  to  be  a  living  contemporaneous  document,  and  at 
the  same  time  it  has  that  universal  application  which  we 
note  in  so  many  speeches  of  Shakespeare.  A  few  years  after 
our  Civil  War,  a  lawyer  in  a  city  of  the  middle  West,  who  had 
been  selected  to  deliver  the  Memorial  Day  oration,  came 
to  a  friend  of  his  in  despair  because  he  could  write  nothing 
but  the  commonplaces  about  those  who  had  died  for  the 
Union  and  for  the  freedom  of  a  race  which  had  been  uttered 
many  times  before,  and  he  asked  for  advice.  "Take  the 
funeral  oration  of  Pericles  for  a  model,"  was  the  reply. 
"Use  his  words  where  they  will  fit,  and  dress  up  the  rest  to 
suit  our  day."  The  orator  was  surprised  to  find  how  much 
of  the  oration  could  be  used  bodily,  and  how  much,  with 


HISTORY  19 

adaptation,  was  germane  to  his  subject.  But  slight  altera 
tions  are  necessary  to  make  the  opening  sentence  this : 
"Most  of  those  who  have  spoken  here  have  commended  the 
law-giver  who  added  this  oration  to  our  other  customs; 
it  seemed  to  them  a  worthy  thing  that  such  an  honor  should 
be  given  to  the  dead  who  have  fallen  on  the  field  of  battle." 
In  many  places  you  may  let  the  speech  run  on  with  hardly  a 
change.  "In  the  face  of  death  [these  men]  resolved  to  rely 
upon  themselves  alone.  And  when  the  moment  came  they 
were  minded  to  resist  and  suffer  rather  than  to  fly  and  save 
their  lives ;  they  ran  away  from  the  word  of  dishonor,  but 
on  the  battlefield  their  feet  stood  fast ;  and  while  for  a  mo 
ment  they  were  in  the  hands  of  fortune,  at  the  height,  not  of 
terror,  but  of  glory,  they  passed  away.  Such  was  the  end  of 
these  men ;  they  were  worthy  of  their  country." 

Consider  for  a  moment,  as  the  work  of  a  contemporary,  the 
book  which  continues  the  account  of  the  Sicilian  expedition, 
and  ends  with  the  disaster  at  Syracuse.  "In  the  describing 
and  reporting  whereof,"  Plutarch  writes,  "Thucydides  hath 
gone  beyond  himself,  both  for  variety  and  liveliness  of  narra 
tion,  as  also  in  choice  and  excellent  words."  " There  is  no 
prose  composition  in  the  world,"  wrote  Macaulay,  "  which  I 
place  so  high  as  the  seventh  book  of  Thucydides.  ...  I  was 
delighted  to  find  in  Gray's  letters,  the  other  day,  this  query  to 
Wharton :  'The  retreat  from  Syracuse,  —  is  it  or  is  it  not  the 
finest  thing  you  ever  read  in  your  life  ?  "  In  the  Annals  of 
Tacitus  we  have  an  account  of  part  of  the  reign  of  Emperor 
Nero,  which  is  intense  in  its  interest  as  the  picture  of  a  state 
of  society  that  would  be  incredible,  did  we  not  know  that 
our  guide  was  a  truthful  man.  One  rises  from  a  perusal  of 
this  with  the  trite  expression,  "  Truth  is  stranger  than 
fiction;"  and  one  need  only  compare  the  account  of  Tacitus 
with  the  romance  of  Quo  Vadis  to  be  convinced  that  true 


20  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

history  is  more  interesting  than  a  novel.  One  of  the  most 
vivid  impressions  I  ever  had  came  immediately  after 
reading  the  story  of  Nero  and  Agrippina  in  Tacitus,  from  a 
view  of  the  statue  of  Agrippina  in  the  National  Museum 
at  Naples.1 

It  will  be  worth  our  while  now  to  sum  up  what  I  think 
may  be  established  with  sufficient  time  and  care.  Natural 
ability  being  presupposed,  the  qualities  necessary  for  a 
historian  are  diligence,  accuracy,  love  of  truth,  impartiality, 
the  thorough  digestion  of  his  materials  by  careful  selection 
and  long  meditating,  and  the  compression  of  his  narrative 
into  the  smallest  compass  consistent  with  the  life  of  his  story. 
He  must  also  have  a  power  of  expression  suitable  for  his 
purpose.  All  these  qualities,  we  have  seen,  were  possessed 
by  Thucydides  and  Tacitus ;  and  we  have  seen  furthermore 
that,  by  bringing  to  bear  these  endowments  and  acquire 
ments  upon  contemporary  history,  their  success  has  been 
greater  than  it  would  have  been  had  they  treated  a  more 
distant  period.  Applying  these  considerations  to  the  writ 
ing  of  history  in  America,  it  would  seem  that  all  we  have 
to  gain  in  method,  in  order  that  when  the  genius  appears 
he  shall  rival  the  great  Greek  and  the  great  Roman,  is  thor 
ough  assimilation  of  materials  and  rigorous  conciseness 
in  relation.  I  admit  that  the  two  things  we  lack  are  difficult 
to  get  as  our  own.  In  the  collection  of  materials,  in  criticism 
and  detailed  analysis,  in  the  study  of  cause  and  effect,  in 
applying  the  principle  of  growth,  of  evolution,  we  certainly 
surpass  the  ancients.  But  if  we  live  in  the  age  of  Darwin, 
we  also  live  in  an  age  of  newspapers  and  magazines,  when, 
as  Lowell  said,  not  only  great  events,  but  a  vast  "  number  of 
trivial  incidents,  are  now  recorded,  and  this  dust  of  time  gets 

1  Since  this  essay  was  first  printed  I  have  seen  the  authenticity  of 
this  portrait  statue  questioned. 


HISTORY  21 

in  our  eyes  " ;  when  distractions  are  manifold ;  when  the  desire 
"to  see  one's  name  in  print"  and  make  books  takes  posses 
sion  of  us  all.  If  one  has  something  like  an  original  idea  or 
a  fresh  combination  of  truisms,  one  obtains  easily  a  hearing. 
The  hearing  once  had,  something  of  a  success  being  made,  the 
writer  is  urged  by  magazine  editors  and  by  publishers  for 
more.  The  good  side  of  this  is  apparent.  It  is  certainly  a 
wholesome  indication  that  a  demand  exists  for  many  serious 
books,  but  the  evil  is  that  one  is  pressed  to  publish  his 
thoughts  before  he  has  them  fully  matured.  The  periods  of 
fruitful  meditation  out  of  which  emerged  the  works  of 
Thucydides  and  Tacitus  seem  not  to  be  a  natural  incident  of 
our  time.  To  change  slightly  the  meaning  of  Lowell,  "the 
bustle  of  our  lives  keeps  breaking  the  thread  of  that  atten 
tion  which  is  the  material  of  memory,  till  no  one  has  patience 
to  spin  from  it  a  continuous  thread  of  thought."  We  have 
the  defects  of  our  qualities.  Nevertheless,  I  am  struck 
with  the  likeness  between  a  common  attribute  of  the  Greeks 
and  Matthew  Arnold's  characterization  of  the  Americans. 
Greek  thought,  it  is  said,  goes  straight  to  the  mark,  and 
penetrates  like  an  arrow.  The  Americans,  Arnold  wrote, 
"think  straight  and  see  clear."  Greek  life  was  adapted  to 
meditation.  American  quickness  and  habit  of  taking  the 
short  cut  to  the  goal  make  us  averse  to  the  patient  and  elabo 
rate  method  of  the  ancients.  In  manner  of  expression, 
however,  we  have  improved.  The  Fourth  of  July  spread- 
eagle  oration,  not  uncommon  even  in  New  England  in  former 
days,  would  now  be  listened  to  hardly  anywhere  without 
merriment.  In  a  Lowell  Institute  lecture  in  1855  Lowell 
said,  "In  modern  times,  the  desire  for  startling  expression 
is  so  strong  that  people  hardly  think  a  thought  is  good  for 
anything  unless  it  goes  off  with  a  pop,  like  a  ginger-beer 
cork."  No  one  would  thus  characterize  our  present  writing. 


22  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Between  reserve  in  expression  and  reserve  in  thought  there 
must  be  interaction.  We  may  hope,  therefore,  that  the 
trend  in  the  one  will  become  the  trend  in  the  other,  and  that 
we  may  look  for  as  great  historians  in  the  future  as  in  the 
past.  The  Thucydides  or  Tacitus  of  the  future  will  write 
his  history  from  the  original  materials,  knowing  that  there 
only  will  he  find  the  living  spirit ;  but  he  will  have  the  helps  of 
the  modern  world.  He  will  have  at  his  hand  monographs  of 
students  whom  the  professors  of  history  in  our  colleges  are 
teaching  with  diligence  and  wisdom,  and  he  will  accept  these 
aids  with  thankfulness  in  his  laborious  search.  He  will  have 
grasped  the  generalizations  and  methods  of  physical  science, 
but  he  must  know  to  the  bottom  his  Thucydides  and  Tacitus. 
He  will  recognize  in  Homer  and  Shakespeare  the  great 
historians  of  human  nature,  and  he  will  ever  attempt, 
although  feeling  that  failure  is  certain,  to  wrest  from  them 
their  secret  of  narration,  to  acquire  their  art  of  portrayal 
of  character.  He  must  be  a  man  of  the  world,  but  equally 
well  a  man  of  the  academy.  If,  like  Thucydides  and  Tacitus, 
the  American  historian  chooses  the  history  of  his  own 
country  as  his  field,  he  may  infuse  his  patriotism  into  his 
narrative.  He  will  speak  of  the  broad  acres  and  their 
products,  the  splendid  industrial  development  due  to  the 
capacity  and  energy  of  the  captains  of  industry ;  but  he  will 
like  to  dwell  on  the  universities  and  colleges,  on  the  great 
numbers  seeking  a  higher  education,  on  the  morality  of  the 
people,  their  purity  of  life,  their  domestic  happiness.  He 
will  never  be  weary  of  referring  to  Washington  and  Lincoln, 
feeling  that  a  country  with  such  exemplars  is  indeed  one  to 
awaken  envy,  and  he  will  not  forget  the  brave  souls  who 
followed  where  they  led.  I  like  to  think  of  the  Memorial 
Day  orator,  speaking  thirty  years  ago  with  his  mind  full  of 
the  Civil  War  and  our  Revolution,  giving  utterance  to  these 


HISTORY  23 

noble  words  of  Pericles:  "I  would  have  you  day  by  day  fix 
your  eyes  upon  the  greatness  of  your  country,  until  you  be 
come  filled  with  love  of  her ;  and  when  you  are  impressed  by 
the  spectacle  of  her  glory,  reflect  that  this  empire  has  been 
acquired  by  men  who  knew  their  duty  and  had  the  courage 
to  do  it ;  who  in  the  hour  of  conflict  had  the  fear  of  dishonor 
always  present  to  them ;  and  who,  if  ever  they  failed  in  an 
enterprise,  would  not  allow  their  virtues  to  be  lost  to  their 
country,  but  freely  gave  their  lives  to  her  as  the  fairest 
offering  which  they  could  present  at  her  feast.  They  re 
ceived  each  one  for  himself  a  praise  which  grows  not  old, 
and  the  noblest  of  all  sepulchers.  For  the  whole  earth  is 
the  sepulcher  of  illustrious  men;  not  only  are  they  com 
memorated  by  columns  and  inscriptions  in  their  own  coun 
try,  but  in  foreign  lands  there  dwells  also  an  unwritten 
memorial  of  them,  graven  not  on  stone,  but  in  the  hearts  of 


men." 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY 

Address  delivered  at  the  Meeting  of  the  American  Historical  Asso 
ciation  in  Detroit,  December,  1900. 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY 

CALLED  on  at  the  last  moment,  owing  to  the  illness  of  Mr. 
Eggleston,  to  take  the  place  of  one  whose  absence  can  never 
be  fully  compensated,  I  present  to  you  a  paper  on  the  writing 
of  history.  It  is  in  a  way  a  continuance  of  my  inaugural 
address  before  this  association  one  year  ago,  and  despite 
the  continuity  of  the  thought  I  have  endeavored  to  treat  the 
same  subject  from  a  different  point  of  view.  While  going 
over  the  same  ground  and  drawing  my  lessons  from  the  same 
historians,  it  is  new  matter  so  far  as  I  have  had  the  honor  to 
present  it  to  the  American  Historical  Association. 

A  historian,  to  make  a  mark,  must  show  some  originality 
somewhere  in  his  work.  The  originality  may  be  in  a  method 
of  investigation ;  it  may  be  in  the  use  of  some  hitherto  inac 
cessible  or  unprinted  material ;  it  may  be  in  the  employment 
of  some  sources  of  information  open  to  everybody,  but  not 
before  used,  or  it  may  be  in  a  fresh  combination  of  well- 
known  and  well-elaborated  facts.  It  is  this  last-named  fea 
ture  that  leads  Mr.  Winsor  to  say,  in  speaking  of  the  different 
views  that  may  be  honestly  maintained  from  working  over 
the  same  material,  "The  study  of  history  is  perennial."  I 
think  I  can  make  my  meaning  clearer  as  to  the  originality  one 
should  try  to  infuse  into  historical  work  by  drawing  an  illus 
tration  from  the  advice  of  a  literary  man  as  to  the  art  of 
writing.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  once  said  to  me,  "  Every 
one  who  writes  should  have  something  to  add  to  the  world 's 
stock  of  knowledge  or  literary  expression.  If  he  falls  un- 

27 


28  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

consciously  into  imitation  or  quotation,  he  takes  away  from 
his  originality.  No  matter  if  some  great  writer  has  expressed 
the  thought  in  better  language  than  you  can  use,  if  you  take 
his  words  you  detract  from  your  own  originality.  Express 
your  thought  feebly  in  your  own  way  rather  than  with 
strength  by  borrowing  the  words  of  another." 

This  same  principle  in  the  art  of  authorship  may  be  ap 
plied  to  the  art  of  writing  history.  " Follow  your  own  star/' 
said  Emerson,  "and  it  will  lead  you  to  that  which  none 
other  can  attain.  Imitation  is  suicide.  You  must  take 
yourself  for  better  or  worse  as  your  own  portion."  Any  one 
who  is  bent  upon  writing  history,  may  be  sure  that  there  is 
in  him  some  originality,  that  he  can  add  something  to  the 
knowledge  of  some  period.  Let  him  give  himself  to  medi 
tation,  to  searching  out  what  epoch  and  what  kind  of  treat 
ment  of  that  epoch  is  best  adapted  to  his  powers  and  to  his 
training.  I  mean  not  only  the  collegiate  training,  but  the 
sort  of  training  one  gets  consciously  or  unconsciously  from 
the  very  circumstances  of  one's  life.  In  the  persistence  of 
thinking,  his  subject  will  flash  upon  him.  Parkman,  said 
Lowell,  showed  genius  in  the  choice  of  his  subject.  The 
recent  biography  of  Parkman  emphasizes  the  idea  which 
we  get  from  his  works  —  that  only  a  man  who  lived  in  the 
virgin  forests  of  this  country  and  loved  them,  and  who  had 
traveled  in  the  far  West  as  a  pioneer,  with  Indians  for  com 
panions,  could  have  done  that  work.  Parkman's  experience 
cannot  be  had  by  any  one  again,  and  he  brought  to  bear  the 
wealth  of  it  in  that  fifty  years'  occupation  of  his.  Critics  of 
exact  knowledge  —  such  as  Justin  Winsor,  for  instance  — 
find  limitations  in  Parkman's  books  that  may  impair  the 
permanence  of  his  fame,  but  I  suspect  that  his  is  the  only 
work  in  American  history  that  cannot  and  will  not  be  writ 
ten  over  again.  The  reason  of  it  is  that  he  had  a  unique 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  29 

life  which  has  permeated  his  narrative,  giving  it  the  stamp  of 
originality.  No  man  whose  training  had  been  gained  wholly 
in  the  best  schools  of  Germany,  France,  or  England  could 
have  written  those  books.  A  training  racy  of  the  soil  was 
needed.  "A  practical  knowledge,"  wrote  Niebuhr,  "must 
support  historical  jurisprudence,  and  if  any  one  has  got  that 
he  can  easily  master  all  scholastic  speculations. "  A  man's 
knowledge  of  everyday  life  in  some  way  fits  him  for  a  certain 
field  of  historical  study  —  in  that  field  lies  success.  In 
seeking  a  period,  no  American  need  confine  himself  to  his 
own  country.  " European  history  for  Americans,"  said 
Motley,  "has  to  be  almost  entirely  rewritten." 

I  shall  touch  upon  only  two  of  the  headings  of  historical 
originality  which  I  have  mentioned.  The  first  that  I  shall 
speak  of  is  the  employment  of  some  sources  of  information 
open  to  everybody,  but  not  before  used.  A  significant  case 
of  this  in  American  history  is  the  use  which  Doctor  von 
Hoist  made  of  newspaper  material.  Niles's  Register,  a  lot 
of  newspaper  cuttings,  as  well  as  speeches  and  state  papers 
in  a  compact  form,  had,  of  course,  been  referred  to  by  many 
writers  who  dealt  with  the  period  they  covered,  but  in  the 
part  of  his  history  covering  the  ten  years  from  1850  to  1860 
von  Hoist  made  an  extensive  and  varied  employment  of 
newspapers  by  studying  the  newspaper  files  themselves. 
As  the  aim  of  history  is  truth,  and  as  newspapers  fail  sadly 
in  accuracy,  it  is  not  surprising  that  many  historical  students 
believe  that  the  examination  of  newspapers  for  any  given 
period  will  not  pay  for  the  labor  and  drudgery  involved; 
but  the  fact  that  a  trained  German  historical  scholar  and 
teacher  at  a  German  university  should  have  found  some 
truth  in  our  newspaper  files  when  he  came  to  write  the  his 
tory  of  our  own  country,  gives  to  their  use  for  that  period 
the  seal  of  scientific  approval.  Doctor  von  Hoist  used  this 


30  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

material  with  pertinence  and  effect;  his  touch  was  nice. 
I  used  to  wonder  at  his  knowledge  of  the  newspaper  world, 
of  the  men  who  made  and  wrote  our  journals,  until  he  told 
me  that  when  he  first  came  to  this  country  one  of  his  meth 
ods  in  gaining  a  knowledge  of  English  was  to  read  the  ad 
vertisements  in  the  newspapers.  Reflection  will  show  one 
what  a  picture  of  the  life  of  a  people  this  must  be,  in  addi 
tion  to  the  news  columns. 

No  one,  of  course,  will  go  to  newspapers  for  facts  if  he  can 
find  those  facts  in  better-attested  documents.  The  haste 
with  which  the  daily  records  of  the  world's  doings  are  made 
up  precludes  sifting  and  revision.  Yet  in  the  decade  be 
tween  1850  and  1860  you  will  find  facts  in  the  newspapers 
which  are  nowhere  else  set  down.  Public  men  of  command 
ing  position  were  fond  of  writing  letters  to  the  journals 
with  a  view  to  influencing  public  sentiment.  These  letters 
in  the  newspapers  are  as  valuable  historical  material  as  if 
they  were  carefully  collected,  edited,  and  published  in  the 
form  of  books.  Speeches  were  made  which  must  be  read, 
and  which  will  be  found  nowhere  but  in  the  journals. 
The  immortal  debates  of  Lincoln  and  Douglas  in  1858  were 
never  put  into  a  book  until  1860,  existing  previously  only 
in  newspaper  print.  Newspapers  are  sometimes  important 
in  fixing  a  date  and  in  establishing  the  whereabouts  of  a  man. 
If,  for  example,  a  writer  draws  a  fruitful  inference  from 
the  alleged  fact  that  President  Lincoln  went  to  see  Edwin 
Booth  play  Hamlet  in  Washington  in  February,  1863,  and 
if  one  finds  by  a  consultation  of  the  newspaper  theatrical 
advertisements  that  Edwin  Booth  did  not  visit  Washington 
during  that  month,  the  significance  of  the  inference  is  de 
stroyed.  Lincoln  paid  General  Scott  a  memorable  visit  at 
West  Point  in  June,  1862.  You  may,  if  I  remember  cor 
rectly,  search  the  books  in  vain  to  get  at  the  exact  date  of 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  31 

this  visit ;  but  turn  to  the  newspaper  files  and  you  find  that 
the  President  left  Washington  at  such  an  hour  on  such  a  day, 
arrived  at  Jersey  City  at  a  stated  time,  and  made  the  trans 
fer  to  the  other  railroad  which  took  him  to  the  station  oppo 
site  West  Point.  The  time  of  his  leaving  West  Point  and 
the  hour  of  his  return  to  Washington  are  also  given. 

The  value  of  newspapers  as  an  indication  of  public  senti 
ment  is  sometimes  questioned,  but  it  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  the  average  man  will  read  the  newspaper  with  the 
sentiments  of  which  he  agrees.  "I  inquired  about  news 
paper  opinion,"  said  Joseph  Chamberlain  in  the  House  of 
Commons  last  May.  "I  knew  no  other  way  of  getting  at 
popular  opinion."  During  the  years  between  1854  and  1860 
the  daily  journals  were  a  pretty  good  reflection  of  public  sen 
timent  in  the  United  States.  Wherever,  for  instance,  you 
found  the  New  York  Weekly  Tribune  largely  read,  Repub 
lican  majorities  were  sure  to  be  had  when  election  day  came. 
For  fact  and  for  opinion,  if  you  knew  the  contributors, 
statements  and  editorials  by  them  were  entitled  to  as  much 
weight  as  similar  public  expressions  in  any  other  form.  You 
get  to  know  Greeley  and  you  learn  to  recognize  his  style. 
Now,  an  editorial  from  him  is  proper  historical  material, 
taking  into  account  always  the  circumstances  under  which 
he  wrote.  The  same  may  be  said  of  Dana  and  of  Hildreth, 
both  editorial  writers  for  the  Tribune,  and  of  the  Washington 
despatches  of  J.  S.  Pike.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  the 
public  letters  of  Greeley  to  the  Tribune  from  Washington  in 
1856  with  his  private  letters  written  at  the  same  time  to 
Dana.  There  are  no  misstatements  in  the  public  letters, 
but  there  is  a  suppression  of  the  truth.  The  explanations 
in  the  private  correspondence  are  clearer,  and  you  need  them 
to  know  fully  how  affairs  looked  in  Washington  to  Greeley 
at  the  time;  but  this  fact  by  no  means  detracts  from  the 


32  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

value  of  the  public  letters  as  historical  material.  I  have 
found  newspapers  of  greater  value  both  for  fact  and  opinion 
during  the  decade  of  1850  to  1860  than  for  the  period  of  the 
Civil  War.  A  comparison  of  the  newspaper  accounts  of 
battles  with  the  history  of  them  which  may  be  drawn  from 
the  correspondence  and  reports  in  the  Official  Records  of 
the  War  of  the  Rebellion  will  show  how  inaccurate  and  mis 
leading  was  the  war  correspondence  of  the  daily  journals. 
It  could  not  well  be  otherwise.  The  correspondent  was 
obliged  in  haste  to  write  the  story  of  a  battle  of  which  he  saw 
but  a  small  section,  and  instead  of  telling  the  little  part  which 
he  knew  actually,  he  had  to  give  to  a  public  greedy  for  news 
a  complete  survey  of  the  whole  battlefield.  This  story  was 
too  often  colored  by  his  liking  or  aversion  for  the  generals  in 
command.  A  study  of  the  confidential  historical  material 
of  the  Civil  War,  apart  from  the  military  operations,  in  com 
parison  with  the  journalistic  accounts,  gives  one  a  higher 
idea  of  the  accuracy  and  shrewdness  of  the  newspaper  cor 
respondents.  Few  important  things  were  brewing  at  Wash 
ington  of  which  they  did  not  get  an  inkling.  But  I  always 
like  to  think  of  two  signal  exceptions.  Nothing  ever  leaked 
out  in  regard  to  the  famous  "  Thoughts  for  the  President's 
consideration,"  which  Seward  submitted  to  Lincoln  in 
March,  1861,  and  only  very  incorrect  guesses  of  the  Presi 
dent's  first  emancipation  proclamation,  brought  before  his 
Cabinet  in  July,  1862,  got  into  newspaper  print. 

Beware  of  hasty,  strained,  and  imperfect  generalizations. 
A  historian  should  always  remember  that  he  is  a  sort  of 
trustee  for  his  readers.  No  matter  how  copious  may  be  his 
notes,  he  cannot  fully  explain  his  processes  or  the  reason  of 
his  confidence  in  one  witness  and  not  in  another,  his  belief  in 
one  honest  man  against  a  half  dozen  untrustworthy  men, 
without  such  prolixity  as  to  make  a  general  history  unread- 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  33 

able.  Now,  in  this  position  as  trustee  he  is  bound  to  assert 
nothing  for  which  he  has  not  evidence,  as  much  as  an  ex 
ecutor  of  a  will  or  the  trustee  for  widows  and  orphans  is 
obligated  to  render  a  correct  account  of  the  moneys  in  his 
possession.  For  this  reason  Grote  has  said,  "An  historian 
is  bound  to  produce  the  materials  upon  which  he  builds,  be 
they  never  so  fantastic,  absurd,  or  incredible. "  Hence  the 
necessity  for  footnotes.  While  mere  illustrative  and  in 
teresting  footnotes  are  perhaps  to  be  avoided,  on  account  of 
their  redundancy,  those  which  give  authority  for  the  state 
ments  in  the  text  can  never  be  in  excess.  Many  good  his 
tories  have  undoubtedly  been  published  where  the  authors 
have  not  printed  their  footnotes;  but  they  must  have  had, 
nevertheless,  precise  records  for  their  authorities.  The  ad 
vantage  and  necessity  of  printing  the  notes  is  that  you  fur 
nish  your  critic  an  opportunity  of  finding  you  out  if  you  have 
mistaken  or  strained  your  authorities.  Bancroft's  example 
is  peculiar.  In  his  earlier  volumes  he  used  footnotes,  but 
in  volume  vii  he  changed  his  plan  and  omitted  notes, 
whether  of  reference  or  explanation.  Nor  do  you  find  them 
in  either  of  his  carefully  revised  editions.  "This  is  done/' 
Bancroft  wrote  in  the  preface  to  his  seventh  volume,  "not 
from  an  unwillingness  to  subject  every  statement  of  fact, 
even  in  its  minutest  details,  to  the  severest  scrutiny;  but 
from  the  variety  and  the  multitude  of  the  papers  which 
have  been  used  and  which  could  not  be  intelligently  cited 
without  a  disproportionate  commentary."  Again,  Blaine's 
"  Twenty  Years  of  Congress,"  a  work  which,  properly  weighed, 
is  not  without  historical  value,  is  only  to  be  read  with  great 
care  on  account  of  his  hasty  and  inaccurate  generalizations. 
There  are  evidences  of  good,  honest  labor  in  those  two  vol 
umes,  much  of  which  must  have  been  done  by  himself. 
There  is  an  aim  at  truth  and  impartiality,  but  many  of  his 


34  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

general  statements  will  seem,  to  any  one  who  has  gone  over 
the  original  material,  to  rest  on  a  slight  basis.  If  Blaine 
had  felt  the  necessity  of  giving  authorities  in  a  footnote  for 
every  statement  about  which  there  might  have  been  a  ques 
tion,  he  certainly  would  have  written  an  entirely  different 
sort  of  a  book. 

My  other  head  is  the  originality  which  comes  from  a  fresh 
combination  of  known  historical  facts. 

I  do  not  now  call  to  mind  any  more  notable  chapter  which 
illustrates  this  than  the  chapter  of  Curtius,  "The  years  of 
peace. "  One  is  perhaps  better  adapted  for  the  keen  enjoy 
ment  of  it  if  he  does  not  know  the  original  material,  for  his 
suspicion  that  some  of  the  inferences  are  strained  and  unwar 
ranted  might  become  a  certainty.  But  accepting  it  as  a 
mature  and  honest  elaboration  by  one  of  the  greatest  histo 
rians  of  Greece  of  our  day,  it  is  a  sample  of  the  vivifying  of 
dry  bones  and  of  a  dovetailing  of  facts  and  ideas  that  makes 
a  narrative  to  charm  and  instruct.  You  feel  that  the  spirit 
of  that  age  we  all  like  to  think  and  dream  about  is  there, 
and  if  you  have  been  so  fortunate  as  to  visit  the  Athens  of 
to-day,  that  chapter,  so  great  is  the  author's  constructive 
imagination,  carries  you  back  and  makes  you  for  the  moment 
live  in  the  Athens  of  Pericles,  of  Sophocles,  of  Phidias  and 
Herodotus. 

With  the  abundance  of  materials  for  modern  history,  and, 
for  that  reason,  our  tendency  to  diffuseness,  nothing  is  so 
important  as  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  best  classic 
models,  such  as  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  and  Tacitus.  In 
Herodotus  you  have  an  example  of  an  interesting  story  with 
the  unity  of  the  narrative  well  sustained  in  spite  of  certain 
unnecessary  digressions.  His  book  is  obviously  a  life  work 
and  the  work  of  a  man  who  had  an  extensive  knowledge 
gained  by  reading,  social  intercourse,  and  travel,  and  who 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  35 

brought  his  knowledge  to  bear  upon  his  chosen  task.  That 
the  history  is  interesting  all  admit,  but  in  different  periods 
of  criticism  stress  is  sometimes  laid  on  the  untrustworthy 
character  of  the  narrative,  with  the  result  that  there  has 
been  danger  of  striking  Herodotus  from  the  list  of  histori 
cal  models ;  but  such  is  the  merit  of  his  work  that  the  Herodo 
tus  cult  again  revives,  and,  I  take  it,  is  now  at  its  height. 
I  received,  six  years  ago,  while  in  Egypt,  a  vivid  impres 
sion  of  him  whom  we  used  to  style  the  Father  of  History. 
Spending  one  day  at  the  great  Pyramids,  when,  after  I  had 
satisfied  my  first  curiosity,  after  I  had  filled  my  eyes  and 
mind  with  the  novelty  of  the  spectacle,  I  found  nothing  so 
gratifying  to  the  historic  sense  as  to  gaze  on  those  most 
wonderful  monuments  of  human  industry,  constructed  cer 
tainly  5000  years  ago,  and  to  read  at  the  same  time  the  ac 
count  that  Herodotus  gave  of  his  visit  there  about  2350  years 
before  the  date  of  my  own.  That  same  night  I  read  in  a 
modern  and  garish  Cairo  hotel  the  current  number  of  the 
London  Times.  In  it  was  an  account  of  an  annual  meet 
ing  of  the  Royal  Historical  Society  and  a  report  of  a  for 
mal  and  carefully  prepared  address  of  its  president,  whose 
subject  was  " Herodotus/7  whose  aim  was  to  point  out  the 
value  of  the  Greek  writer  as  a  model  to  modern  historians. 
The  Times,  for  the  moment  laying  aside  its  habitual  attack 
on  the  then  Liberal  government,  devoted  its  main  leader  to 
Herodotus  —  to  his  merits  and  the  lessons  he  conveyed  to 
the  European  writers.  The  article  was  a  remarkable  blend 
ing  of  scholarship  and  good  sense,  and  I  ended  the  day  with 
the  reflection  of  what  a  space  in  the  world's  history  Herodo 
tus  filled,  himself  describing  the  work  of  twenty-six  hundred 
years  before  his  own  time  and  being  dilated  on  in  1894  by 
one  of  the  most  modern  of  nineteenth-century  newspapers. 
It  is  generally  agreed,  I  think,  that  Thucydides  is  first  in 


36  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

order  of  time  of  philosophic  historians,  but  it  does  not  seem 
to  me  that  we  have  most  to  learn  from  him  in  the  philosophic 
quality.  The  tracing  of  cause  and  effect,  the  orderly  se 
quence  of  events,  is  certainly  better  developed  by  moderns 
than  it  has  been  by  ancients.  The  influence  of  Darwin  and 
the  support  and  proof  which  he  gives  to  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  furnish  a  training  of  thought  which  was  impossible 
to  the  ancients;  but  Thucydides  has  digested  his  material 
and  compressed  his  narrative  without  taking  the  life  out  of 
his  story  in  a  manner  to  make  us  despair,  and  this  does  not, 
I  take  it,  come  from  paucity  of  materials.  A  test  which  I 
began  to  make  as  a  study  in  style  has  helped  me  in  estimat 
ing  the  solidity  of  a  writer.  Washington  Irving  formed  his 
style  by  reading  attentively  from  time  to  time  a  page  of 
Addison  and  then,  closing  the  book,  endeavored  to  write  out 
the  same  ideas  in  his  own  words.  In  this  way  his  style 
became  assimilated  to  that  of  the  great  English  essayist. 
I  have  tried  the  same  mode  with  several  writers.  I  found 
that  the  plan  succeeded  with  Macaulay  and  with  Lecky.  I 
tried  it  again  and  again  with  Shakespeare  and  Hawthorne, 
but  if  I  succeeded  in  writing  out  the  paragraph  I  found  that 
it  was  because  I  memorized  their  very  words.  To  write 
out  their  ideas  in  my  own  language  I  found  impossible. 
I  have  had  the  same  result  with  Thucydides  in  trying  to  do 
this  with  his  description  of  the  plague  in  Athens.  Now,  I 
reason  from  this  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare  and  Thucydides 
that  their  thought  was  so  concise  they  themselves  got  rid  of 
all  redundancies;  hence  to  effect  the  reproduction  of  their 
ideas  in  any  but  their  own  language  is  practically  impos 
sible. 

It  is  related  of  Macaulay  somewhere  in  his  "Life  and 
Letters,"  that  in  a  moment  of  despair,  when  he  instituted 
a  comparison  between  his  manuscript  and  the  work  of 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  37 

Thucydides,  he  thought  of  throwing  his  into  the  fire.  I 
suspect  that  Macaulay  had  not  the  knack  of  discarding  ma 
terial  on  which  he  had  spent  time  and  effort,  seeing  how 
easily  such  events  glowed  under  his  graphic  pen.  This  is 
one  reason  why  he  is  prolix  in  the  last  three  volumes.  The 
first  two,  which  begin  with  the  famous  introductory  chap 
ter  and  continue  the  story  through  the  revolution  of  1688 
to  the  accession  of  William  and  Mary,  seem  to  me  models 
of  historical  composition  so  far  as  arrangement,  orderly 
method,  and  liveliness  of  narration  go.  Another  defect  of 
Macaulay  is  that,  while  he  was  an  omnivorous  reader  and 
had  a  prodigious  memory,  he  was  not  given  to  long-continued 
and  profound  reflection.  He  read  and  rehearsed  his  reading 
in  memory,  but  he  did  not  give  himself  to  "deep,  abstract 
meditation "  and  did  not  surrender  himself  to  "the  fruitful 
leisures  of  the  spirit."  Take  this  instance  of  Macaulay's 
account  of  a  journey:  "The  express  train  reached  Holly- 
head  about  7  in  the  evening.  I  read  between  London 
and  Bangor  the  lives  of  the  emperors  from  Maximin 
to  Carinus,  inclusive,  in  the  Augustine  history,  and  was 
greatly  amused  and  interested."  On  board  the  steamer: 
"I  put  on  my  greatcoat  and  sat  on  deck  during  the  whole 
voyage.  As  I  could  not  read,  I  used  an  excellent  substitute 
for  reading.  I  went  through  '  Paradise  Lost ;  in  my  head. 
I  could  still  repeat  half  of  it,  and  that  the  best  half. 
I  really  never  enjoyed  it  so  much."  In  Dublin:  "The  rain 
was  so  heavy  that  I  was  forced  to  come  back  in  a  covered 
car.  While  in  this  detestable  vehicle  I  looked  rapidly  through 
the  correspondence  between  Pliny  and  Trajan  and  thought 
that  Trajan  made  a  most  creditable  figure."  It  may  be 
that  Macaulay  did  not  always  digest  his  knowledge  well. 
Yet  in  reading  his  "  Life  and  Letters  "  you  know  that  you  are 
in  company  with  a  man  who  read  many  books  and  you  give 


38  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

faith  to  Thackeray's  remark,  "Macaulay  reads  twenty  books 
to  write  a  sentence;  he  travels  a  hundred  miles  to  make 
a  line  of  description."  It  is  a  matter  of  regret  that  the 
progress  of  historical  criticism  and  the  scientific  teaching 
of  history  have  had  the  tendency  to  drive  Macaulay  out  of 
the  fashion  with  students,  and  I  know  not  whether  the  good 
we  used  to  get  out  of  him  thirty-five  years  ago  can  now  be 
got  from  other  sources.  For  I  seem  to  miss  something  that 
we  historical  students  had  a  generation  ago  —  and  that  is 
enthusiasm  for  the  subject.  The  enthusiasm  that  we  had 
then  had  —  the  desire  to  compass  all  knowledge,  the  wish  to 
gather  the  fruits  of  learning  and  lay  them  devoutly  at  the 
feet  of  our  chosen  muse  —  this  enthusiasm  we  owed  to 
Macaulay  and  to  Buckle.  Quite  properly,  no  one  reads 
Buckle  now,  and  I  cannot  gainsay  what  John  Morley  said 
of  Macaulay:  " Macaulay  seeks  truth,  not  as  she  should 
be  sought,  devoutly,  tentatively,  with  the  air  of  one  touch 
ing  the  hem  of  a  sacred  garment,  but  clutching  her  by  the 
hair  of  the  head  and  dragging  her  after  him  in  a  kind  of 
boisterous  triumph,  a  prisoner  of  war  and  not  a  goddess/' 
It  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  Macaulay  and  Buckle  imparted 
a  new  interest  to  history. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  impression  we  get  of  Macaulay 
through  reading  his  "  Life  and  Letters."  Of  Carlyle,  in  read 
ing  the  remarkable  biography  of  him,  we  get  the  notion  of  a 
great  thinker  as  well  as  a  great  reader.  He  was  not  as  keen 
and  diligent  in  the  pursuit  of  material  as  Macaulay.  He 
did  not  like  to  work  in  libraries ;  he  wanted  every  book  he 
used  in  his  own  study  —  padded  as  it  was  against  the  noises 
which  drove  him  wild.  H.  Morse  Stephens  relates  that 
Carlyle  would  not  use  a  collection  of  documents  relating  to 
the  French  Revolution  in  the  British  Museum  for  the  reason 
that  the  museum  authorities  would  not  have  a  private  room 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  39 

reserved  for  him  where  he  might  study.  Rather  than  work 
in  a  room  with  other  people,  he  neglected  this  valuable 
material.  But  Carlyle  has  certainly  digested  and  used  his 
material  well.  His  "  French  Revolution  "  seems  to  approach 
the  historical  works  of  the  classics  in  there  being  so  much  in 
a  little  space.  "With  the  gift  of  song/'  Lowell  said,  "Car 
lyle  would  have  been  the  greatest  of  epic  poets  since  Homer ;" 
and  he  also  wrote,  Carlyle's  historical  compositions  are  no 
more  history  than  the  historical  plays  of  Shakespeare. 

The  contention  between  the  scientific  historians  and  those 
who  hold  to  the  old  models  is  interesting  and  profitable. 
One  may  enjoy  the  controversy  and  derive  benefit  from  it 
without  taking  sides.  I  suspect  that  there  is  truth  in  the 
view  of  both.  We  may  be  sure  that  the  long-continued  study 
and  approval  by  scholars  of  many  ages  of  the  works  of  He 
rodotus,  Thucydides,  and  Tacitus  implies  historical  merit  on 
their  part  in  addition  to  literary  art.  It  is,  however,  in 
teresting  to  note  the  profound  difference  between  President 
Woolsey's  opinion  of  Thucydides  and  that  of  some  of  his 
late  German  critics.  Woolsey  said,  "I  have  such  confidence 
in  the  absolute  truthfulness  of  Thucydides  that  were  he 
really  chargeable  with  folly,  as  Grote  alleges  [in  the  affair  of 
Amphipolis],  I  believe  he  would  have  avowed  it."  On 
the  other  hand,  a  German  critic,  cited  by  Holm,  says  that 
Thucydides  is  a  poet  who  invents  facts  partly  in  order  to 
teach  people  how  things  ought  to  be  done  and  partly  be 
cause  he  liked  to  depict  certain  scenes  of  horror.  He  says 
further,  a  narrative  of  certain  occurrences  is  so  full  of  impos 
sibilities  that  it  must  be  pure  invention  on  the  part  of  the 
historian.  Another  German  maintains  that  Thucydides  has 
indulged  in  "a  fanciful  and  half -romantic  picture  of  events." 
But  Holm,  whom  the  scientific  historians  claim  as  one  of 
their  own,  says,  "Thucydides  still  remains  a  trustworthy 


40  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

historical  authority;"  and,  "On  the  whole,  therefore,  the  old 
view  that  he  is  a  truthful  writer  is  not  in  the  least  shaken." 
Again  Holm  writes:  "Attempts  have  been  made  to  convict 
Thucydides  of  serious  inaccuracies,  but  without  success. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  writer  of  this  work  [that  is,  the  scien 
tific  historian,  Holm]  is  able  to  state  that  he  has  followed 
him  topographically  for  the  greater  part  of  the  sixth  and 
seventh  books  —  and  consequently  for  nearly  one  fourth 
of  the  whole  history  —  and  has  found  that  the  more  care 
fully  his  words  are  weighed  and  the  more  accurately  the 
ground  is  studied  the  clearer  both  the  text  and  events  be 
come,  and  this  is  certainly  high  praise."  Holm  and  Percy 
Gardner,  both  of  whom  have  the  modern  method  and  have 
studied  diligently  the  historical  evidence  from  coins  and 
inscriptions,  placed  great  reliance  on  Herodotus,  who,  as 
well  as  Thucydides  and  Tacitus,  is  taken  by  scholars  as  a 
model  of  historical  composition. 

The  sifting  of  time  settles  the  reputations  of  historians. 
Of  the  English  of  the  eighteenth  century  only  one  historian 
has  come  down  to  us  as  worthy  of  serious  study.  Time  is 
wasted  in  reading  Hume  and  Robertson  as  models,  and  no 
one  goes  to  them  for  facts.  But  thirty  years  ago  no  course 
of  historical  reading  was  complete  without  Hume.  In  this 
century  the  sifting  process  still  goes  on.  One  loses  little  by 
not  reading  Alison's  "History  of  Europe."  But  he  was  much 
in  vogue  in  the  '50's.  Harper's  Magazine  published  a  part  of 
his  history  as  a  serial.  His  rounded  periods  and  bombastic 
utterances  were  quoted  with  delight  by  those  who  thought 
that  history  was  not  history  unless  it  was  bombastic.  Emer 
son  says  somewhere,  "Avoid  adjectives;  let  your  nouns  do 
the  work."  There  was  hardly  a  sentence  in  Alison  which 
did  not  traverse  this  rule.  One  of  his  admirers  told  me  that 
the  great  merit  of  his  style  was  his  choiceness  and  aptness 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  41 

in  his  use  of  adjectives.  It  is  a  style  which  now  provokes 
merriment,  arid  even  had  Alison  been  learned  and  impartial, 
and  had  he  possessed  a  good  method,  his  style  for  the  present 
taste  would  have  killed  his  book.  Gibbon  is  sometimes  called 
pompous,  but  place  him  by  the  side  of  Alison  and  what  one 
may  have  previously  called  pompousness  one  now  calls 
dignity. 

Two  of  the  literary  historians  of  our  century  survive  — 
Carlyle  and  Macaulay.  They  may  be  read  with  care.  We 
may  do  as  Cassius  said  Brutus  did  to  him,  observe  all  their 
faults,  set  them  in  a  note-book,  learn  and  con  them  by  rote ; 
nevertheless  we  shall  get  good  from  them.  Oscar  Browning 
said — I  am  quoting  H.  Morse  Stephens  again — of  Carlyle's 
description  of  the  flight  of  the  king  to  Varennes,  that 
in  every  one  of  his  details  where  a  writer  could  go  wrong, 
Carlyle  had  gone  wrong;  but  added  that,  although  all  the 
details  were  wrong,  Carlyle's  account  is  essentially  accurate. 
No  defense,  I  think,  can  be  made  of  Carlyle's  statement  that 
Marat  was  a  "  blear-eyed  dog  leach,"  nor  of  those  state 
ments  from  which  you  get  the  distinct  impression  that  the 
complexion  of  Robespierre  was  green;  nevertheless,  every 
one  who  studies  the  French  Revolution  reads  Carlyle,  and  he 
is  read  because  the  reading  is  profitable.  The  battle  descrip 
tions  in  Carlyle's  "  Frederick  the  Great  "  are  well  worth  read 
ing.  How  refreshing  they  are  after  technical  descriptions ! 
Carlyle  said  once,  "  Battles  since  Homer's  time,  when  they 
were  nothing  but  fighting  mobs,  have  ceased  to  be  worth 
reading  about/'  but  he  made  the  modern  battle  interesting. 

Macaulay  is  an  honest  partisan.  You  learn  very  soon  how 
to  take  him,  and  when  distrust  begins  one  has  correctives 
in  Gardiner  and  Ranke.  Froude  is  much  more  dangerous. 
His  splendid  narrative  style  does  not  compensate  for  his 
inaccuracies.  Langlois  makes  an  apt  quotation  from 


42  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Froude.  "We  saw,"  says  Froude,  of  the  city  of  Adelaide, 
in  Australia,  "below  us  in  a  basin,  with  the  river  winding 
through  it,  a  city  of  150,000  inhabitants,  none  of  whom  has 
ever  known  or  ever  will  know  one  moment's  anxiety  as  to 
the  recurring  regularity  of  three  meals  a  day."  Now  for 
the  facts.  Langlois  says:  "Adelaide  is  built  on  an  emi 
nence;  no  river  runs  through  it.  When  Froude  visited  it 
the  population  did  not  exceed  75,000,  and  it  was  suffering 
from  a  famine  at  the  time."  Froude  was  curious  in  his  in 
accuracies.  He  furnished  the  data  which  convict  him  of 
error.  He  quoted  inaccurately  the  Simancas  manuscripts 
and  deposited  correct  copies  in  the  British  Museum.  Car- 
lyle  and  Macaulay  are  honest  partisans  and  you  know  how 
to  take  them,  but  for  constitutional  inaccuracy  such  as 
Froude's  no  allowance  can  be  made. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  said  of  Green  that  he  combines 
the  merits  of  the  scientific  and  literary  historian.  He  has 
written  an  honest  and  artistic  piece  of  work.  But  he  is 
not  infallible.  I  have  been  told  on  good  authority  that  in 
his  reference  to  the  Thirty  Years'  War  he  has  hardly  stated 
a  single  fact  correctly,  yet  the  general  impression  you  get 
from  his  account  is  correct.  Saintsbury  writes  that  Green 
has  "out-Macaulayed  Macaulay  in  reckless  abuse"  of  Dry- 
den.  Stubbs  and  Gardiner  are  preeminently  the  scientific 
historians  of  England.  Of  Stubbs,  from  actual  knowledge, 
I  regret  that  I  cannot  speak,  but  the  reputation  he  has 
among  historical  experts  is  positive  proof  of  his  great  value. 
Of  Gardiner  I  can  speak  with  knowledge.  Any  one  who 
desires  to  write  history  will  do  well  to  read  every  line  Gar 
diner  has  written  —  not  the  text  alone,  but  also  the  notes. 
It  is  an  admirable  study  in  method  which  will  bear  impor 
tant  fruit.  But  because  Gibbon,  Gardiner,  and  Stubbs 
should  be  one's  chief  reliance,  it  does  not  follow  that  one  may 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  43 

neglect  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Tacitus,  Thucydides,  and  Herod 
otus.  Gardiner  himself  has  learned  much  from  Macaulay 
and  Carlyle.  All  of  them  may  be  criticised  on  one  point  or 
another,  but  they  all  have  lessons  for  us. 

We  shall  all  agree  that  the  aim  of  history  is  to  get  at  the 
truth  and  express  it  as  clearly  as  possible.  The  differences 
crop  out  when  we  begin  to  elaborate  our  meaning.  "This 
I  regard  as  the  historian's  highest  function/7  writes  Tacitus, 
"to  let  no  worthy  action  be  uncommemorated,  and  to  hold 
out  the  reprobation  of  posterity  as  a  terror  to  evil  words 
and  deeds ;"  while  Langlois  and  the  majority  of  the  scholars 
of  Oxford  are  of  the  opinion  that  the  formation  and  expres 
sion  of  ethical  judgments,  the  approval  or  condemnation  of 
Julius  Caesar  or  of  Caesar  Borgia  is  not  a  thing  within  the 
historian's  province.  Let  the  controversy  go  on !  It  is 
well  worth  one's  while  to  read  the  presentations  of  the  sub 
ject  from  the  different  points  of  view.  But  infallibility 
will  nowhere  be  found.  Mommsen  and  Curtius  in  their  de 
tailed  investigations  received  applause  from  those  who  ad 
hered  rigidly  to  the  scientific  view  of  history,  but  when  they 
addressed  the  public  in  their  endeavor,  it  is  said,  to  pro 
duce  an  effect  upon  it,  they  relaxed  their  scientific  rigor; 
hence  such  a  chapter  as  Curtius's  "The  years  of  peace,"  and 
in  another  place  his  transmuting  a  conjecture  of  Grote  into 
an  assertion ;  hence  Mommsen's  effusive  panegyric  of  Caesar. 
If  Mommsen  did  depart  from  the  scientific  rules,  I  suspect 
that  it  came  from  no  desire  of  a  popular  success,  but  rather 
from  the  enthusiasm  of  much  learning.  The  examples  of 
Curtius  and  Mommsen  show  probably  that  such  a  departure 
from  strict  impartiality  is  inherent  in  the  writing  of  general 
history,  and  it  comes,  I  take  it,  naturally  and  unconsciously. 
Holm  is  a  scientific  historian,  but  on  the  Persian  Invasion 
he  writes:  "I  have  followed  Herodotus  in  many  passages 


44  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

which  are  unauthenticated  and  probably  even  untrue,  be 
cause  he  reproduces  the  popular  traditions  of  the  Greeks." 
And  again:  " History  in  the  main  ought  only  to  be  a 
record  of  facts,  but  now  and  then  the  historian  may  be 
allowed  to  display  a  certain  interest  in  his  subject."  These 
expressions  traverse  the  canons  of  scientific  history  as  much 
as  the  sayings  of  the  ancient  historiographers  themselves. 
But  because  men  have  warm  sympathies  that  cause  them 
to  color  their  narratives,  shall  no  more  general  histories  be 
written  ?  Shall  history  be  confined  to  the  printing  of  origi 
nal  documents  and  to  the  publication  of  learned  monographs 
in  which  the  discussion  of  authorities  is  mixed  up  with  the 
relation  of  events?  The  proper  mental  attitude  of  the 
general  historian  is  to  take  no  thought  of  popularity.  The 
remark  of  Macaulay  that  he  would  make  his  history  take  the 
place  of  the  last  novel  on  my  lady's  table  is  not  scientific. 
The  audience  which  the  general  historian  should  have  in 
mind  is  that  of  historical  experts  —  men  who  are  devoting 
their  lives  to  the  study  of  history.  Words  of  approval 
from  them  are  worth  more  than  any  popular  recognition, 
for  theirs  is  the  enduring  praise.  Their  criticism  should  be 
respected;  there  should  be  unceasing  effort  to  avoid  giving 
them  cause  for  fault-finding.  No  labor  should  be  despised 
which  shall  enable  one  to  present  things  just  as  they  are. 
Our  endeavor  should  be  to  think  straight  and  see  clear.  An 
incident  should  not  be  related  on  insufficient  evidence  because 
it  is  interesting,  but  an  affair  well  attested  should  not  be  dis 
carded  because  it  happens  to  have  a  human  interest.  I  feel 
quite  sure  that  the  cardinal  aim  of  Gardiner  was  to  be  ac 
curate  and  to  proportion  his  story  well.  In  this  he  has  suc 
ceeded  ;  but  it  is  no  drawback  that  he  has  made  his  volumes 
interesting.  Jacob  D.  Cox,  who  added  to  other  accomplish 
ments  that  of  being  learned  in  the  law,  and  who  looked  upon 


CONCERNING  THE  WRITING  OF  HISTORY  45 

Gardiner  with  such  reverence  that  he  called  him  the  Chief 
Justice,  said  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  read  novels, 
as  he  found  Gardiner's  history  more  interesting  than  any 
romance.  The  scientific  historians  have  not  revolutionized 
historical  methods,  but  they  have  added  much.  The  process 
of  accretion  has  been  going  on  since,  at  any  rate,  the 
time  of  Herodotus,  and  the  canons  for  weighing  evidence 
and  the  synthesis  of  materials  are  better  understood  now 
than  ever  before,  for  they  have  been  reduced  from  many 
models.  I  feel  sure  that  there  has  been  a  growth  in  candor. 
Compare  the  critical  note  to  a  later  edition  which  Macaulay 
wrote  in  1857,  maintaining  the  truth  of  his  charge  against 
William  Penn,  with  the  manly  way  in  which  Gardiner  owns 
up  when  an  error  or  insufficient  evidence  for  a  statement  is 
pointed  out.  It  is  the  ethics  of  the  profession  to  be  forward 
in  correcting  errors.  The  difference  between  the  old  and  the 
new  lies  in  the  desire  to  have  men  think  you  are  infallible 
and  the  desire  to  be  accurate. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN 

Lecture  read  before  the  History  Club  of  Harvard  University,  April 
27, 1908,  and  at  Yale,  Columbia,  and  Western  Reserve  Univer 
sities. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN 

I  AM  assuming  that  among  my  audience  there  are  some 
students  who  aspire  to  become  historians.  To  these  espe 
cially  my  discourse  is  addressed. 

It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  I  should  speak  positively 
and  in  detail  on  matters  of  education.  Nevertheless,  a  man 
of  sixty  who  has  devoted  the  better  part  of  his  life  to  reading, 
observation,  and  reflection  must  have  gained,  if  only  through 
a  perception  of  his  own  deficiencies,  some  ideas  that  should 
be  useful  to  those  who  have  life's  experience  before  them. 
Hence,  if  a  Freshman  should  say  to  me,  I  wish  to  be  a 
historian,  tell  me  what  preliminary  studies  you  would  ad 
vise,  I  should  welcome  the  opportunity.  From  the  nature 
of  the  case,  the  history  courses  will  be  sought  and  studied  in 
their  logical  order  and  my  advice  will  have  to  do  only  with 
collateral  branches  of  learning. 

In  the  first  place,  I  esteem  a  knowledge  of  Latin  and  French 
of  the  highest  importance.  By  a  knowledge  of  French,  I  mean 
that  you  should  be  able  to  read  it  substantially  as  well  as  you 
read  English,  so  that  when  you  have  recourse  to  a  dictionary 
it  will  be  a  French  dictionary  and  not  one  of  the  French-Eng 
lish  kind.  The  historical  and  other  literature  that  is  thus 
opened  up  to  you  enables  you  to  live  in  another  world,  with 
a  point  of  view  impossible  to  one  who  reads  for  pleasure  only 
in  his  own  tongue.  To  take  two  instances :  Moli£re  is  a 
complement  to  Shakespeare,  and  the  man  who  knows  his 
Moliere  as  he  does  his  Shakespeare  has  made  a  propitious 

E  49 


50  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

beginning  in  that  study  of  human  character  which  must  be 
understood  if  he  desires  to  write  a  history  that  shall  gain 
readers.  "I  have  known  and  loved  Moliere,"  said  Goethe, 
"from  my  youth  and  have  learned  from  him  during  my 
whole  life.  I  never  fail  to  read  some  of  his  plays  every  year, 
that  I  may  keep  up  a  constant  intercourse  with  what  is  ex 
cellent.  It  is  not  merely  the  perfectly  artistic  treatment 
which  delights  me ;  but  particularly  the  amiable  nature,  the 
highly  formed  mind  of  the  poet.  There  is  in  him  a  grace 
and  a  feeling  for  the  decorous,  and  a  tone  of  good  society, 
which  his  innate  beautiful  nature  could  only  attain  by 
daily  intercourse  with  the  most  eminent  men  of  his  age. "  l 

My  other  instance  is  Balzac.  In  reading  him  for  pleasure, 
as  you  read  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  you  are  absorbing  an 
exact  and  fruitful  knowledge  of  French  society  of  the  Res 
toration  and  of  Louis  Philippe.  Moreover  you  are  still 
pursuing  your  study  of  human  character  under  one  of  the 
acute  critics  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Balzac  has  always 
seemed  to  me  peculiarly  French;  his  characters  belong 
essentially  to  Paris  or  to  the  provinces.  I  associate  Eugenie 
Grandet  with  Saumur  in  the  Touraine  and  Cesar  Birotteau 
with  the  Rue  St.  Honore*  in  Paris ;  and  all  his  other  men  and 
women  move  naturally  in  the  great  city  or  in  the  prov 
inces  which  he  has  given  them  for  their  home.  A  devoted 
admirer  however  tells  me  that  in  his  opinion  Balzac  has 
created  universal  types ;  the  counterpart  of  some  of  his  men 
may  be  seen  in  the  business  and  social  world  of  Boston,  and 
the  peculiarly  sharp  and  dishonest  transaction  which 
brought  Ce*sar  Birotteau  to  financial  ruin  was  here  exactly 
reproduced. 

The  French  language  and  literature  seem  to  possess  the 
merits  which  ours  lack;  and  the  writer  of  history  cannot 

1  Conversations  of  Goethe,  Eng.  trans.,  230. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  51 

afford  to  miss  the  lessons  he  will  receive  by  a  constant  read 
ing  of  the  best  French  prose. 

I  do  not  ask  the  Freshman  who  is  going  to  be  a  historian 
to  realize  Macaulay's  ideal  of  a  scholar,  to  "read  Plato  with 
his  feet  on  the  fender/7  1  but  he  should  at  least  acquire  a 
pretty  thorough  knowledge  of  classical  Latin,  so  that  he  can 
read  Latin,  let  me  say,  as  many  of  us  read  German,  that  is 
with  the  use  of  a  lexicon  and  the  occasional  translation  of  a 
sentence  or  a  paragraph  into  English  to  arrive  at  its  exact 
meaning.  Of  this,  I  can  speak  from  the  point  of  view  of  one 
who  is  deficient.  The  reading  of  Latin  has  been  for  me  a 
grinding  labor  and  I  would  have  liked  to  read  with  pleasure 
in  the  original,  the  History  and  Annals  of  Tacitus,  Caesar's 
Gallic  and  Civil  wars  and  Cicero's  Orations  and  Pri 
vate  Letters  even  to  the  point  of  following  Macaulay's 
advice,  "Soak  your  mind  with  Cicero."  l  These  would  have 
given  me,  I  fancy,  a  more  vivid  impression  of  two  periods 
of  Roman  history  than  I  now  possess.  Ferrero,  who  is  im 
parting  a  fresh  interest  to  the  last  period  of  the  Roman  re 
public,  owes  a  part  of  his  success,  I  think,  to  his  thorough 
digestion  and  effective  use  of  Cicero's  letters,  which  have  the 
faculty  of  making  one  acquainted  with  Cicero  just  as  if  he 
were  a  modern  man.  During  a  sojourn  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Geneva,  I  read  two  volumes  of  Voltaire's  private  cor 
respondence,  and  later,  while  passing  the  winter  in  Rome, 
the  four  volumes  of  Cicero's  letters  in  French.  I  could  not 
help  thinking  that  in  the  republic  of  letters  one  was  not  in 
time  at  a  far  greater  distance  from  Cicero  than  from  Vol 
taire.  While  the  impression  of  nearness  may  have  come  from 
reading  both  series  of  letters  in  French,  or  because,  to  use 
John  Morley's  words,  "two  of  the  most  perfect  masters 
of  the  art  of  letter  writing  were  Cicero  and  Voltaire,"2 
1  Trevelyan,  I,  86.  2  Life  of  Gladstone,  II,  181. 


52  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

there  is  a  decided  flavor  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  Cicero's 
words  to  a  good  liver  whom  he  is  going  to  visit.  "You 
must  not  reckon,"  he  wrote,  "  on  my  eating  your  hors 
d'oeuvre.  I  have  given  them  up  entirely.  The  time  has 
gone  by  when  I  can  abuse  my  stomach  with  your  olives  and 
your  Lucanian  sausages."  1 

To  repeat  then,  if  the  student,  who  is  going  to  be  a  his 
torian,  uses  his  acquisitive  years  in  obtaining  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  French  and  Latin,  he  will  afterwards  be  spared 
useless  regrets.  He  will  naturally  add  German  for  the  pur 
pose  of  general  culture  and,  if  languages  come  easy,  perhaps 
Greek.  "Who  is  not  acquainted  with  another  language," 
said  Goethe,  "knows  not  his  own."  A  thorough  knowl 
edge  of  Latin  and  French  is  a  long  stride  towards  an  effi 
cient  mastery  of  English.  In  the  matter  of  diction,  the 
English  writer  is  rarely  in  doubt  as  to  words  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin,  for  these  are  deep-rooted  in  his  childhood  and  his 
choice  is  generally  instinctive.  The  difficulties  most  per 
sistently  besetting  him  concern  words  that  come  from  the 
Latin  or  the  French;  and  here  he  must  use  reason  or  the 
dictionary  or  both.  The  author  who  has  a  thorough  knowl 
edge  of  Latin  and  French  will  argue  with  himself  as  to  the 
correct  diction,  will  follow  Emerson's  advice,  "Know  words 
etymologic  ally ;  pull  them  apart ;  see  how  they  are  made ; 
and  use  them  only  where  they  fit."  2  As  it  is  in  action 
through  life,  so  it  is  in  writing ;  the  conclusions  arrived  at  by 
reason  are  apt  to  be  more  valuable  than  those  which  we 
accept  on  authority.  The  reasoned  literary  style  is  more 
virile  than  that  based  on  the  dictionary.  A  judgment  ar 
rived  at  by  argument  sticks  in  the  memory,  while  it  is  neces 
sary  for  the  user  of  the  dictionary  constantly  to  invoke 
authority,  so  that  the  writer  who  reasons  out  the  meaning 

1  III,  51.  2  Talks  with  Emerson,  23. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  53 

of  words  may  constantly  accelerate  his  pace,  for  the  doubt 
and  decision  of  yesterday  is  to-day  a  solid  acquirement,  in 
grained  in  his  mental  being.  I  have  lately  been  reading  a 
good  deal  of  Gibbon  and  I  cannot  imagine  his  having  had 
frequent  recourse  to  a  dictionary.  I  do  not  remember  even 
an  allusion  either  in  his  autobiographies  or  in  his  private 
letters  to  any  such  aid.  Undoubtedly  his  thorough  knowl 
edge  of  Latin  and  French,  his  vast  reading  of  Latin,  French, 
and  English  books,  enabled  him  to  dispense  with  the  thumb 
ing  of  a  dictionary  and  there  was  probably  a  reasoning 
process  at  the  back  of  every  important  word.  It  is  difficult, 
if  not  impossible,  to  improve  on  Gibbon  by  the  substitution 
of  one  word  for  another. 

A  rather  large  reading  of  Sainte-Beuve  gives  me  the  same 
impression.  Indeed  his  literary  fecundity,  the  necessity  of 
having  the  Causerie  ready  for  each  Monday's  issue  of  the 
Constitutionnel  or  the  Moniteur,  precluded  a  study  of  words 
while  composing,  and  his  rapid  and  correct  writing  was  un 
doubtedly  due  to  the  training  obtained  by  the  process  of 
reasoning.  Charles  Sumner  seems  to  be  an  exception  to 
my  general  rule.  Although  presumably  he  knew  Latin 
well,  he  was  a  slave  to  dictionaries.  He  generally  had  five 
at  his  elbow  (Johnson,  Webster,  Worcester,  Walker,  and 
Pickering)  and  when  in  doubt  as  to  the  use  of  a  word  he 
consulted  all  five  and  let  the  matter  be  decided  on  the  Ameri 
can  democratic  principle  of  majority  rule.1  Perhaps  this 
is  one  cause  of  the  stilted  and  artificial  character  of  Sumner's 
speeches  which,  unlike  Daniel  Webster's,  are  not  to  be  thought 
of  as  literature.  One  does  not  associate  dictionaries  with 
Webster.  Thus  had  I  written  the  sentence  without  thinking 
of  a  not  infrequent  confusion  between  Noah  and  Daniel 
Webster,  and  this  confusion  reminded  me  of  a  story  which 

1  My  Vol.  II,  142,  n.  2. 


54  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

John  Fiske  used  to  tell  with  gusto  and  which  some  of  you 
may  not  have  heard.  An  English  gentleman  remarked  to  an 
American:  "What  a  giant  intellect  that  Webster  of  yours 
had !  To  think  of  so  great  an  orator  and  statesman  writing 
that  dictionary !  But  I  felt  sure  that  one  who  towered  so 
much  above  his  fellows  would  come  to  a  bad  end  and  I  was 
not  a  bit  surprised  to  learn  that  he  had  been  hanged  for  the 
murder  of  Dr.  Parkman." 

To  return  to  my  theme:  One  does  not  associate  dic 
tionaries  with  Daniel  Webster.  He  was  given  to  preparing 
his  speeches  in  the  solitudes  of  nature,  and  his  first  Bunker 
Hill  oration,  delivered  in  1825,  was  mainly  composed  while 
wading  in  a  trout  stream  and  desultorily  fishing  for  trout.1 
Joe  Jefferson,  who  loved  fishing  as  well  as  Webster,  used  to 
say,  "The  trout  is  a  gentleman  and  must  be  treated  as  such." 
Webster's  companion  might  have  believed  that  some  such 
thought  as  this  was  passing  through  the  mind  of  the  great 
Daniel  as,  standing  middle  deep  in  the  stream,  he  uttered 
these  sonorous  words :  "Venerable  men  !  You  have  come  down 
to  us  from  a  former  generation.  Heaven  has  bounteously 
lengthened  out  your  lives  that  you  might  behold  this  joyous 
day."  I  think  Daniel  Webster  for  the  most  part  reasoned 
out  his  choice  of  words;  he  left  the  dictionary  work  to 
others.  After  delivery,  he  threw  down  the  manuscript  of 
his  eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jefferson  and  said  to  a  student  in 
his  law  office,  "There,  Tom,  please  to  take  that  discourse  and 
weed  out  the  Latin  words."  2 

When  doubtful  as  to  the  use  of  words,  I  should  have  been 
helped  by  a  better  knowledge  of  Latin  and  enabled  very  often 
to  write  with  a  surer  touch.  Though  compelled  to  resort 
frequently  to  the  dictionary,  I  early  learned  to  pay  little 
attention  to  the  definition  but  to  regard  with  care  the  illus- 

1  Curtis,  I,  250.  2  Ibid.,  I,  252. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  55 

trative  meaning  in  the  citations  from  standard  authors. 
When  I  began  writing  I  used  the  Imperial  Dictionary,  an 
improvement  over  Webster  in  this  respect.  Soon  the  Cen 
tury  Dictionary  began  to  appear,  and  best  of  all  the  New 
English  Dictionary  on  historical  principles  edited  by  Murray 
and  Bradley  and  published  by  the  Clarendon  Press  at  Ox 
ford.  A  study  of  the  mass  of  quotations  in  these  two  dic 
tionaries  undoubtedly  does  much  to  atone  for  the  lack  of 
linguistic  knowledge ;  and  the  tracing  of  the  history  of  words, 
as  it  is  done  in  the  Oxford  dictionary,  makes  any  inquiry  as 
to  the  meaning  of  a  word  fascinating  work  for  the  historian. 
Amongst  the  multiplicity  of  aids  for  the  student  and  the 
writer  no  single  one  is  so  serviceable  as  this  product  of  labor 
and  self-sacrifice,  fostered  by  the  Clarendon  Press,  to  whom, 
all  writers  in  the  English  language  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude. 

Macaulay  had  a  large  fund  of  knowledge  on  which  he 
might  base  his  reasoning,  and  his  indefatigable  mind  wel 
comed  any  outside  assistance.  He  knew  Greek  and  Latin 
thoroughly  and  a  number  of  other  languages,  but  it  is  related 
of  him  that  he  so  thumbed  his  copy  of  Johnson's  Dictionary 
that  he  was  continually  sending  it  to  the  binder.  In  return 
for  his  mastery  of  the  languages,  the  dictionaries  are  fond  of 
quoting  Macaulay.  If  I  may  depend  upon  a  rough  mental 
computation,  no  prose  writer  of  the  nineteenth  century  is 
so  frequently  cited.  "He  never  wrote  an  obscure  sentence 
in  his  life,"  said  John  Morley ; 1  and  this  is  partly  due  to  his 
exact  use  of  words.  There  is  never  any  doubt  about  his 
meaning.  Macaulay  began  the  use  of  Latin  words  at  an 
early  age.  When  four  and  a  half  years  old  he  was  asked  if 
he  had  got  over  the  toothache,  to  which  question  came 
this  reply,  "The  agony  is  abated." 

Mathematics  beyond  arithmetic  are  of  no  use  to  the  his- 
1  Miscellanies,  I,  275. 


56  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

torian  and  may  be  entirely  discarded.  I  do  not  ignore  John 
Stuart  Mill's  able  plea  for  them,  some  words  of  which  are 
worth  quoting.  " Mathematical  studies,"  he  said,  "are  of 
immense  benefit  to  the  student's  education  by  habituating 
him  to  precision.  It  is  one  of  the  peculiar  excellences  of 
mathematical  discipline  that  the  mathematician  is  never 
satisfied  with  an  a  pen  pres.  He  requires  the  exact  truth.  .  .  . 
The  practice  of  mathematical  reasoning  gives  wariness  of 
the  mind;  it  accustoms  us  to  demand  a  sure  footing."  1 
Mill,  however,  is  no  guide  except  for  exceptionally  gifted 
youth.  He  began  to  learn  Greek  when  he  was  three  years 
old,  and  by  the  time  he  had  reached  the  age  of  twelve  had 
read  a  good  part  of  Latin  and  Greek  literature  and  knew 
elementary  geometry  and  algebra  thoroughly. 

The  three  English  historians  who  have  most  influenced 
thought  from  1776  to  1900  are  those  whom  John  Morley 
called  " great  born  men  of  letters"  2  —  Gibbon,  Macaulay,  and 
Carlyle;  and  two  of  these  despised  mathematics.  "As  soon 
as  I  understood  the  principles,"  wrote  Gibbon  in  his  "Auto 
biography,"  "  I  relinquished  forever  the  pursuit  of  the  Mathe 
matics;  nor  can  I  lament  that  I  desisted  before  my  mind 
was  hardened  by  the  habit  of  rigid  demonstration,  so  de 
structive  of  the  finer  feelings  of  moral  evidence,  which  must 
however  determine  the  actions  and  opinions  of  our  lives."  3 
Macaulay,  while  a  student  at  Cambridge,  wrote  to  his  mother : 
"Oh,  for  words  to  express  my  abomination  of  mathematics 
.  .  .  ' Discipline'  of  the  mind!  Say  rather  starvation,  con 
finement,  torture,  annihilation !  .  .  .  I  feel  myself  be 
coming  a  personification  of  Algebra,  a  living  trigonometrical 
canon,  a  walking  table  of  logarithms.  All  my  perceptions 
of  elegance  and  beauty  gone,  or  at  least  going.  .  .  .  Fare- 

1  Exam,  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  II,  310,  311. 

2  Gladstone,  I,  195.  3  p.  142. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  57 

well  then  Homer  and  Sophocles  and  Cicero."  1  I  must  in 
fairness  state  that  in  after  life  Macaulay  regretted  his  lack  of 
knowledge  of  mathematics  and  physics,  but  his  career  and 
Gibbon's  demonstrate  that  mathematics  need  have  no  place 
on  the  list  of  the  historian's  studies.  Carlyle,  however, 
showed  mathematical  ability  which  attracted  the  attention 
of  Legendre  and  deemed  himself  sufficiently  qualified  to 
apply,  when  he  was  thirty-nine  years  old,  for  the  professor 
ship  of  Astronomy  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  He  did 
not  succeed  in  obtaining  the  post  but,  had  he  done  so,  he 
" would  have  made,"  so  Froude  his  biographer  thinks,  "the 
school  of  Astronomy  at  Edinburgh  famous  throughout  Eu 
rope."  2  When  fifty-two,  Carlyle  said  that  "the  man  who 
had  mastered  the  first  forty-seven  propositions  of  Euclid 
stood  nearer  to  God  than  he  had  done  before."  3  I  may  cap 
this  with  some  words  of  Emerson,  who  in  much  of  his 
thought  resembled  Carlyle:  "What  hours  of  melancholy 
my  mathematical  works  cost !  It  was  long  before  I  learned 
that  there  is  something  wrong  with  a  man's  brain  who  loves 
them."  4 

Mathematics  are  of  course  the  basis  of  many  studies, 
trades,  and  professions  and  are  sometimes  of  benefit  as  a 
recreation  for  men  of  affairs.  Devotion  to  Euclid  undoubt 
edly  added  to  Lincoln's  strength,  but  the  necessary  range 
of  knowledge  for  the  historian  is  so  vast  that  he  cannot  spend 
his  evenings  and  restless  nights  in  the  solution  of  mathe 
matical  problems.  In  short,  mathematics  are  of  no  more 
use  to  him  than  is  Greek  to  the  civil  or  mechanical  engineer. 

In  the  category  with  mathematics  must  be  placed  a  de 
tailed  study  of  any  of  the  physical  or  natural  sciences.  I 
think  that  a  student  during  his  college  course  should  have 

1  Trevelyan,  I,  91.  2  Froude,  II,  317. 

3  Nichol,  20.  4  Talks  with  Emerson,  162. 


58  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

a  year's  work  in  a  chemical  laboratory  or  else,  if  his  taste 
inclines  him  to  botany,  geology,  or  zoology,  a  year's  training 
of  his  observing  powers  in  some  one  of  these  studies.  For  he 
ought  to  get,  while  at  an  impressible  age,  a  superficial  knowl 
edge  of  the  methods  of  scientific  men,  as  a  basis  for  his  future 
reading.  We  all  know  that  science  is  moving  the  world 
and  to  keep  abreast  with  the  movement  is  a  necessity  for 
every  educated  man.  Happily,  there  are  scientific  men  who 
popularize  their  knowledge.  John  Fiske,  Huxley,  and  Tyn- 
dall  presented  to  us  the  theories  and  demonstrations  of  science 
in  a  literary  style  that  makes  learning  attractive.  Huxley 
and  Tyndall  were  workers  in  laboratories  and  gave  us  the 
results  of  their  patient  and  long-continued  experiments.  It 
is  too  much  to  expect  that  every  generation  will  produce 
men  of  the  remarkable  power  of  expression  of  Huxley  and 
John  Fiske,  but  there  will  always  be  clear  writers  who  will 
delight  in  instructing  the  general  public  in  language  easily 
understood.  In  an  address  which  I  delivered  eight  or  nine 
years  ago  before  the  American  Historical  Association,  I 
cheerfully  conceded  that,  in  the  realm  of  intellectual  en 
deavor,  the  natural  and  physical  sciences  should  have  the 
precedence  of  history.  The  question  with  us  now  is  not 
which  is  the  nobler  pursuit,  but  how  is  the  greatest  economy 
of  time  to  be  compassed  for  the  historian.  My  advice  is  in 
the  line  of  concentration.  Failure  in  life  arises  frequently 
from  intellectual  scattering ;  hence  I  like  to  see  the  historical 
student  getting  his  physical  and  natural  science  at  second 
hand. 

The  religious  and  political  revolutions  of  the  last  four 
hundred  years  have  weakened  authority;  but  in  intellec 
tual  development  I  believe  that  in  general  an  important 
advantage  lies  in  accepting  the  dicta  of  specialists.  In  this 
respect  our  scientific  men  may  teach  us  a  lesson.  One  not 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  59 

infrequently  meets  a  naturalist  or  a  physician,  who  possesses 
an  excellent  knowledge  of  history,  acquired  by  reading  the 
works  of  general  historians  who  have  told  an  interesting 
story.  He  would  laugh  at  the  idea  that  he  must  verify  the 
notes  of  his  author  and  read  the  original  documents,  for  he 
has  confidence  that  the  interpretation  is  accurate  and  truth 
ful.  This  is  all  that  I  ask  of  the  would-be  historian.  For 
the  sake  of  going  to  the  bottom  of  things  in  his  own  special 
study,  let  him  take  his  physical  and  natural  science  on  trust 
and  he  may  well  begin  to  do  this  during  his  college  course. 
As  a  manner  of  doing  this,  there  occur  to  me  three  interest 
ing  biographies,  the  Life  of  Darwin,  the  Life  of  Huxley, 
and  the  Life  of  Pasteur,  which  give  the  important  part  of 
the  story  of  scientific  development  during  the  last  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Now  I  believe  that  a  thorough 
mastery  of  these  three  books  will  be  worth  more  to  the 
historical  student  than  any  driblets  of  science  that  he  may 
pick  up  in  an  unsystematic  college  course. 

With  this  elimination  of  undesirable  studies  —  undesirable 
because  of  lack  of  time  —  there  remains  ample  time  for  those 
studies  which  are  necessary  for  the  equipment  of  a  historian ; 
to  wit,  languages,  histories,  English,  French,  and  Latin  litera 
ture,  and  as  much  of  economics  as  his  experienced  teachers 
advise.  Let  him  also  study  the  fine  arts  as  well  as  he  can  in 
America,  fitting  himself  for  an  appreciation  of  the  great  works 
of  architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting  in  Europe  which  he 
will  recognize  as  landmarks  of  history  in  their  potent  influ 
ence  on  the  civilization  of  mankind.  Let  us  suppose  that 
our  hypothetical  student  has  marked  out  on  these  lines  his 
college  course  of  four  years,  and  his  graduate  course  of  three. 
At  the  age  of  twenty-five  he  will  then  have  received  an 
excellent  college  education.  The  university  with  its  learned 
and  hard-working  teachers,  its  wealth,  its  varied  and  whole- 


60  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

some  traditions  has  done  for  him  the  utmost  possible. 
Henceforward  his  education  must  depend  upon  himself 
and,  unless  he  has  an  insatiable  love  of  reading,  he  had  better 
abandon  the  idea  of  becoming  a  historian ;  for  books,  pam 
phlets,  old  newspapers,  and  manuscripts  are  the  stock  of  his 
profession  and  to  them  he  must  show  a  single-minded  de 
votion.  He  must  love  his  library  as  Pasteur  did  his  labora 
tory  and  must  fill  with  delight  most  of  the  hours  of  the  day 
in  reading  or  writing.  To  this  necessity  there  is  no  alter 
native.  Whether  it  be  in  general  preparation  or  in  the 
detailed  study  of  a  special  period,  there  is  no  end  to  the  ma 
terial  which  may  be  read  with  advantage.  The  young  man 
of  twenty-five  can  do  no  better  than  to  devote  five  years  of 
his  life  to  general  preparation.  And  what  enjoyment  he 
has  before  him !  He  may  draw  upon  a  large  mass  of  his 
tories  and  biographies,  of  books  of  correspondence,  of  poems, 
plays,  and  novels;  it  is  then  for  him  to  select  with  dis 
crimination,  choosing  the  most  valuable,  as  they  afford 
him  facts,  augment  his  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and 
teach  him  method  and  expression.  "A  good  book/7  said 
Milton,  "is  the  precious  life  blood  of  a  master  spirit/' 
and  every  good  book  which  wins  our  student's  interest 
and  which  he  reads  carefully  will  help  him  directly  or 
indirectly  in  his  career.  And  there  are  some  books  which 
he  will  wish  to  master,  as  if  he  were  to  be  subjected 
to  an  examination  on  them.  As  to  these  he  will  be  guided 
by  strong  inclination  and  possibly  with  a  view  to  the  sub 
ject  of  his  magnum  opus;  but  if  these  considerations  be 
absent  and  if  the  work  has  not  been  done  in  the  university, 
I  cannot  too  strongly  recommend  the  mastery  of  Gibbon's 
" Decline  and  Fall"  and  Bryce's  "Holy  Roman  Empire." 
Gibbon  merits  close  study  because  his  is  undoubtedly  the 
greatest  history  of  modern  times  and  because  it  is,  in  the 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  61 

words  of  Carlyle,  a  splendid  bridge  from  the  old  world  to  the 
new.  He  should  be  read  in  the  edition  of  Bury,  whose 
scholarly  introduction  gives  a  careful  and  just  estimate  of 
Gibbon  and  whose  notes  show  the  results  of  the  latest  re 
searches.  This  edition  does  not  include  Guizot's  and  Mil- 
man's  notes,  which  seem  to  an  old-fashioned  reader  of  Gib 
bon  like  myself  worthy  of  attention,  especially  those  on  the 
famous  Fifteenth  and  Sixteenth  Chapters.  Bryce's  "Holy 
Roman  Empire"  is  a  fitting  complement  to  Gibbon,  and  the 
intellectual  possession  of  the  two  is  an  education  in  itself 
which  will  be  useful  in  the  study  of  any  period  of  history  that 
may  be  chosen. 

The  student  who  reads  Gibbon  will  doubtless  be  influenced 
by  his  many  tributes  to  Tacitus  and  will  master  the  Roman 
historian.  I  shall  let  Macaulay  furnish  the  warrant  for  a 
close  study  of  Thucydides.  "This  day/7  Macaulay  said, 
when  in  his  thirty-fifth  year,  "I  finished  Thucydides  after 
reading  him  with  inexpressible  interest  and  admiration. 
He  is  the  greatest  historian  that  ever  lived."  Again  during 
the  same  year  he  wrote :  "What  are  all  the  Roman  historians 
to  the  great  Athenian?  I  do  assure  you  there  is  no  prose 
composition  in  the  world,  not  even  the  oration  on  the  Crown, 
which  I  place  so  high  as  the  seventh  book  of  Thucydides. 
It  is  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  human  art.  I  was  delighted  to  find 
in  Gray's  letters  the  other  day  this  query  to  Wharton :  'The 
retreat  from  Syracuse  —  is  or  is  it  not  the  finest  thing  you 
ever  read  in  your  life?7  .  .  .  Most  people  read  all  the 
Greek  they  ever  read  before  they  are  five  and  twenty. 
They  never  find  time  for  such  studies  afterwards  until 
they  are  in  the  decline  of  life ;  and  then  their  knowledge  of 
the  language  is  in  great  measure  lost,  and  cannot  easily  be 
recovered.  Accordingly,  almost  all  the  ideas  that  people 
have  of  Greek  literature  are  ideas  formed  while  they  were 


62  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

still  very  young.  A  young  man,  whatever  his  genius  may 
be,  is  no  judge  of  such  a  writer  as  Thucydides.  I  had  no 
high  opinion  of  him  ten  years  ago.  I  have  now  been  reading 
him  with  a  mind  accustomed  to  historical  researches  and 
to  political  affairs  and  I  am  astonished  at  my  own  former 
blindness  and  at  his  greatness."  1 

I  have  borrowed  John  Morley's  words,  speaking  of  Gibbon, 
Macaulay,  and  Carlyle  as  " three  great  born  men  of  letters." 
Our  student  cannot  therefore  afford  to  miss  a  knowledge  of 
Macaulay's  History,  but  the  Essays,  except  perhaps  three 
or  four  of  the  latest  ones,  need  not  be  read.  In  a  pref 
ace  to  the  authorized  edition  of  the  Essays,  Macaulay  wrote 
that  he  was  " sensible  of  their  defects,"  deemed  them  "imper 
fect  pieces,"  and  did  not  think  that  they  were  "  worthy  of  a 
permanent  place  in  English  literature."  For  instance,  his 
essay  on  Milton  contained  scarcely  a  paragraph  which  his 
matured  judgment  approved.  Macaulay's  peculiar  faults 
are  emphasized  in  his  Essays  and  much  of  the  harsh  criti 
cism  which  he  has  received  comes  from  the  glaring  defects  of 
these  earlier  productions.  His  history,  however,  is  a  great 
book,  shows  extensive  research,  a  sane  method  and  an  ex 
cellent  power  of  narration ;  and  when  he  is  a  partisan,  he  is 
so  honest  and  transparent  that  the  effect  of  his  partiality 
is  neither  enduring  nor  mischievous. 

I  must  say  further  to  the  student:  read  either  Carlyle's 
''French  Revolution"  or  his  "  Frederick  the  Great,"  I 
care  not  which,  although  it  is  well  worth  one's  while  to 
read  both.  If  your  friends  who  maintain  that  history 
is  a  science  convince  you  that  the  "French  Revolution" 
is  not  history,  as  perhaps  they  may,  read  it  as  a  narra 
tive  poem.  Truly  Carlyle  spoke  rather  like  a  poet  than 
a  historian  when  he  wrote  to  his  wife  (in  his  forty-first 
1  Trevelyan,  I,  379,  387,  409. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  63 

year)  :  "  A  hundred  pages  more  and  this  cursed  book  is  flung 
out  of  me.  I  mean  to  write  with  force  of  fire  till  that  con 
summation;  above  all  with  the  speed  of  fire.  ...  It  all 
stands  pretty  fair  in  my  head,  nor  do  I  mean  to  investigate 
much  more  about  it,  but  to  splash  down  what  I  know  in 
large  masses  of  colors,  that  it  may  look  like  a  smoke-and- 
flame  conflagration  in  the  distance,  which  it  is."  1  It  was 
Carlyle's  custom  to  work  all  of  the  morning  and  take  a  soli 
tary  walk  in  Hyde  Park  in  the  afternoon;  when  looking  upon 
the  gay  scene,  the  display  of  wealth  and  fashion,  "  seeing," 
as  he  said,  "all  the  carriages  dash  hither  and  thither  and  so 
many  human  bipeds  cheerily  hurrying  along,"  he  said  to 
himself :  "  There  you  go,  brothers,  in  your  gilt  carriages  and 
prosperities,  better  or  worse,  and  make  an  extreme  bother 
and  confusion,  the  devil  very  largely  in  it.  ...  Not  one 
of  you  could  do  what  I  am  doing,  and  it  concerns  you  too, 
if  you  did  but  know  it."  2  When  the  book  was  done  he 
wrote  to  his  brother,  "It  is  a  wild,  savage  book,  itself  a  kind 
of  French  Revolution."  3  From  its  somewhat  obscure  style 
it  requires  a  slow  perusal  and  careful  study,  but  this  serves 
all  the  more  to  fix  it  in  the  memory  causing  it  to  remain  an 
abiding  influence. 

There  are  eight  volumes  of  "Frederick  the  Great,"  contain 
ing,  according  to  Barrett  Wendell's  computation,  over  one 
million  words ;  and  this  eighteenth-century  tale,  with  its  large 
number  of  great  and  little  characters,  its  "mass  of  living 
facts"  impressed  Wendell  chiefly  with  its  unity.  "What 
ever  else  Carlyle  was,"  he  wrote,  "the  unity  of  this  enormous 
book  proves  him,  when  he  chose  to  be,  a  Titanic  artist." 
Only  those  who  have  striven  for  unity  in  a  narrative  can 
appreciate  the  tribute  contained  in  these  words.  It  was  a 

1  Froude,  III,  64,  65.  2  Ibid.,  II,  385;  III,  59. 

3  Ibid.,  Ill,  73.  4  English  Composition,  158. 


64  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

struggle,  too,  for  Carlyle.  Fifty-six  years  old  when  he  con 
ceived  the  idea  of  Frederick,  his  nervousness  and  irritability 
were  a  constant  torment  to  himself  and  his  devoted  wife. 
Many  entries  in  his  journal  tell  of  his  " dismal  continual 
wrestle  with  Friedrich,"  *  perhaps  the  most  characteristic 
of  which  is  this:  "My  Frederick  looks  as  if  it  would  never 
take  shape  in  me ;  in  fact  the  problem  is  to  burn  away  the 
immense  dungheap  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with  its  ghastly 
cants,  foul,  blind  sensualities,  cruelties,  and  inanity  now 
fallen  putrid,  rotting  inevitably  towards  annihilation;  to 
destroy  and  extinguish  all  that,  having  got  to  know  it,  and 
to  know  that  it  must  be  rejected  for  evermore;  after  which 
the  perennial  portion,  pretty  much  Friedrich  and  Voltaire 
so  far  as  I  can  see,  may  remain  conspicuous  and  capable  of 
being  delineated."  2 

The  student,  who  has  become  acquainted  with  the  works 
of  Gibbon,  Macaulay,  and  Carlyle,  will  wish  to  know  some 
thing  of  the  men  themselves  and  this  curiosity  may  be  easily 
and  delightfully  gratified.  The  autobiographies  of  Gibbon, 
the  Life  of  Macaulay  by  Sir  George  Trevelyan,  the  History 
of  Carlyle 's  Life  by  Froude,  present  the  personality  of  these 
historians  in  a  vivid  manner.  Gibbon  has  himself  told  of 
all  his  own  faults  and  Froude  has  omitted  none  of  Carlyle's, 
so  that  these  two  books  are  useful  aids  in  a  study  of  human 
nature,  in  which  respect  they  are  real  adjuncts  of  Boswell's 
Johnson.  Gibbon,  Carlyle,  and  Macaulay  had  an  insatiable 
love  of  reading;  in  their  solitary  hours  they  were  seldom 
without  books  in  their  hands.  Valuable  instruction  may  be 
derived  from  a  study  of  their  lives  from  their  suggestions  of 
books,  helpful  in  the  development  of  a  historian.  They 
knew  how  to  employ  their  odd  moments,  and  Gibbon  and 
Macaulay  were  adepts  in  the  art  of  desultory  reading.  Sainte- 

1  Letters  of  Jane  Carlyle,  II,  31.  3  Froude's  Carlyle,  IV,  125. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  65 

Beuve  makes  a  plea  for  desultory  reading  in  instancing 
Tocqueville's  lack  of  it,  so  that  he  failed  to  illustrate  and 
animate  his  pages  with  its  fruits,  the  result  being,  in  the  long 
run,  great  monotony.1  As  a  relief  to  the  tired  brain,  without 
a  complete  loss  of  time,  the  reading  at  hazard,  even  brows 
ing  in  a  library,  has  its  place  in  the  equipment  of  a  historian. 
One  of  the  most  striking  examples  of  self-education  in 
literature  is  Carlyle's  seven  years,  from  the  age  of  thirty-two 
to  thirty-nine,  passed  at  Craigenputtock  where  his  native  in 
clination  was  enforced  by  his  physical  surroundings.  Craigen 
puttock,  wrote  Froude,  is  "the  dreariest  spot  in  all  the  Brit 
ish  dominions.  The  nearest  cottage  is  more  than  a  mile  from 
it ;  the  elevation,  700  feet  above  the  sea,  stunts  the  trees  and 
limits  the  garden  produce  to  the  hardiest  vegetables.  The 
house  is  gaunt  and  hungry-looking."  2  The  place  realized 
Tennyson's  words,  "0,  the  dreary,  dreary  moorland." 
Here  Carlyle  read  books,  gave  himself  over  to  silent  medita 
tion,  and  wrote  for  his  bread,  although  a  man  who  possessed 
an  adequate  income  could  not  have  been  more  independent 
in  thought  than  he  was,  or  more  averse  to  writing  to  the 
order  of  editors  of  reviews  and  magazines.  With  no  out 
side  distractions,  books  were  his  companions  as  well  as 
his  friends.  As  you  read  Froude's  intimate  biography,  it 
comes  upon  you,  as  you  consider  Carlyle's  life  in  London, 
what  a  tremendous  intellectual  stride  he  had  made  while 
living  in  this  dreary  solitude  of  Craigenputtock.  It  was 
there  that  he  continued  his  development  under  the  intellec 
tual  influence  of  Goethe,  wrote  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  and  con 
ceived  the  idea  of  writing  the  story  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Those  seven  years,  as  you  trace  their  influence  during  the 
rest  of  his  life,  will  ever  be  a  tribute  to  the  concentrated, 
bookish  labors  of  bookish  men. 

1  Causeries  du  Lundi,  XV,  95.  2  Froude,  II,  19. 


66  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

It  is  often  said  that  some  practical  experience  in  life  is 
necessary  for  the  training  of  a  historian ;  that  only  thus  can 
he  arrive  at  a  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  become  a 
judge  of  character;  that,  while  the  theory  is  occasionally 
advanced  that  history  is  a  series  of  movements  which  may 
be  described  without  taking  individuals  into  account,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  one  cannot  go  far  on  this  hypothesis  without 
running  up  against  the  truth  that  movements  have  motors 
and  the  motors  are  men.  Hence  we  are  to  believe  the 
dictum  that  the  historian  needs  that  knowledge  of  men 
which  is  to  be  obtained  only  by  practical  dealings  with  them. 
It  is  true  that  Gibbon's  service  in  the  Hampshire  militia 
and  his  membership  in  the  House  of  Commons  were  of  bene 
fit  to  the  historian  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Grote's  business 
life,  Macaulay's  administrative  work  in  India,  and  the  par 
liamentary  experience  of  both  were  undoubtedly  of  value  to 
their  work  as  historians,  but  there  are  excellent  historians 
who  have  never  had  any  such  training.  Carlyle  is  an  ex 
ample,  and  Samuel  R.  Gardiner  is  another.  Curiously 
enough,  Gardiner,  who  was  a  pure  product  of  the  university 
and  the  library,  has  expressed  sounder  judgments  on  many 
of  the  prominent  men  of  the  seventeenth  century  than  Ma- 
caulay.  I  am  not  aware  that  there  is  in  historical  literature 
any  other  such  striking  contrast  as  this,  for  it  is  difficult  to 
draw  the  line  closely  between  the  historian  and  the  man  of 
affairs,  but  Gardiner's  example  is  strengthened  in  other  his 
torians'  lives  sufficiently  to  warrant  the  statement  that  the 
historian  need  not  be  a  man  of  the  world.  Books  are  written 
by  men  and  treat  of  the  thoughts  and  actions  of  men  and 
a  good  study  may  be  made  of  human  character  without  going 
beyond  the  walls  of  a  library. 

Drawing  upon  my  individual  experience  again  I  feel  that 
the  two  authors  who  have  helped  me  most  in  this  study  of 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  67 

human  character  are  Shakespeare  and  Homer.  I  do  not 
mean  that  in  the  modern  world  we  meet  Hamlet,  lago,  Mac 
beth,  and  Shylock,  but  when  we  perceive  "the  native  hue  of 
resolution  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought,"  when 
we  come  in  contact  with  the  treachery  of  a  seeming  friend, 
with  unholy  ambition  and  insensate  greed,  we  are  better 
able  to  interpret  them  on  the  page  of  history  from  having 
grasped  the  lessons  of  Shakespeare  to  mankind.  A  constant 
reading  of  Shakespeare  will  show  us  unchanging  passions 
and  feelings ;  and  we  need  not  make  literal  contrasts,  as  did 
the  British  matron  who  remarked  of  "  Antony  and  Cleo 
patra"  that  it  was  "so  unlike  the  home  life  of  our  beloved 
queen."  Bernard  Shaw,  who  has  said  much  in  detraction 
of  Shakespeare,  writes  in  one  of  his  admiring  moods,  "that 
the  imaginary  scenes  and  people  he  has  created  become  more 
real  to  us  than  our  actual  life  —  at  least  until  our  knowledge 
and  grip  of  actual  life  begins  to  deepen  and  glow  beyond 
the  common.  When  I  was  twenty,"  Shaw  continues,  "I 
knew  everybody  in  Shakespeare  from  Hamlet  to  Abhorson, 
much  more  intimately  than  I  knew  my  living  contempo 
raries;  and  to  this  day,  if  the  name  of  Pistol  or  Polonius 
catches  my  eye  in  a  newspaper,  I  turn  to  the  passage  with 
curiosity."  * 

Homer's  character  of  Ulysses  is  a  link  between  the  ancient 
and  the  modern  world.  One  feels  that  Ulysses  would  be  at 
home  in  the  twentieth  century  and  would  adapt  himself  to 
the  conditions  of  modern  political  life.  Perhaps,  indeed,  he 
would  have  preferred  to  his  militant  age  our  industrial  one 
where  prizes  are  often  won  by  craft  and  persuasive  eloquence 
rather  than  by  strength  of  arm.  The  story  of  Ulysses  is  a 
signal  lesson  in  the  study  of  human  character,  and  receives 
a  luminous  commentary  in  Shakespeare's  adaptation  of  it, 
1  Dramatic  Opinions,  II,  53. 


68  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

The  advice  which  Ulysses  gives  to  Achilles l  is  a  piece  of 
worldly  wisdom  and  may  well  be  acted  on  by  those  who 
desire  advancement  in  life  and  are  little  scrupulous  in  regard 
to  means.  The  first  part  of  Goethe's  "  Faust "  is  another  book 
which  has  profoundly  affected  my  view  of  life.  I  read  it 
first  when  seventeen  years  old  and  have  continually  re-read 
it ;  and,  while  I  fail  to  comprehend  it  wholly,  and,  although 
it  does  not  give  me  the  same  kind  of  knowledge  of  human 
character  that  I  derive  from  Shakespeare's  plays,  I  carry 
away  from  it  abiding  impressions  from  the  contact  that  it 
affords  with  one  of  the  greatest  of  human  minds. 

All  this  counsel  of  mine,  as  to  the  reading  of  the  embryo 
historian  is,  of  course,  merely  supplementary,  and  does  not 
pretend  to  be  exhaustive.  I  am  assuming  that  during  his 
undergraduate  and  graduate  course  the  student  has  been 
advised  to  read,  either  wholly  or  in  part,  most  of  the  Eng 
lish,  German,  and  French  scientific  historians  of  the  past 
fifty  years,  and  that  he  has  become  acquainted  in  a  greater 
or  less  degree  with  all  the  eminent  American  historians.  My 
own  experience  has  been  that  a  thorough  knowledge  of  one 
book  of  an  author  is  better  than  a  superficial  acquaintance 
with  all  of  his  works.  The  only  book  of  Francis  Parkman's 
which  I  have  read  is  his  "Montcalm  and  Wolfe,"  parts  of 
which  I  have  gone  over  again  and  again.  One  chapter,  per 
vaded  with  the  scenery  of  the  place,  I  have  read  on  Lake 
George,  three  others  more  than  once  at  Quebec,  and  I  feel 
that  I  know  Parkman's  method  as  well  as  if  I  had  skimmed 
all  his  volumes.  But  I  believe  I  was  careful  in  my  selection, 
for  in  his  own  estimation,  and  in  that  of  the  general  public, 
"Montcalm  and  Wolfe"  is  his  best  work.  So  with  Motley, 

1  "  Time  hath,  my  lord,  a  wallet  at  his  back 
Wherein  he  puts  alms  for  oblivion, 
A  great-sized  monster  of  ingratitudes:"  etc. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  69 

I  have  read  nothing  but  the  "  Dutch  Republic/ '  but  that  I 
have  read  through  twice  carefully.  I  will  not  say  that  it  is 
the  most  accurate  of  his  works,  but  it  is  probably  the  most 
interesting  and  shows  his  graphic  and  dashing  style  at  its 
best.  An  admirer  of  Stubbs  told  me  that  his  "  Lectures  and 
Addresses  on  Mediaeval  and  Modern  History  "  would  give  me 
a  good  idea  of  his  scholarship  and  literary  manner  and  that 
I  need  not  tackle  his  magnum  opus.  But  those  lectures 
gave  me  a  taste  for  more  and,  undeterred  by  the  remark  of 
still  another  admirer  that  nobody  ever  read  his  "  Consti 
tutional  History"  through,  I  did  read  one  volume  with 
interest  and  profit,  and  I  hope  at  some  future  time  to  read 
the  other  two.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  read  everything 
that  Samuel  R.  Gardiner  has  written  except  "What  Gun 
powder  Plot  Was."  Readers  differ.  There  are  fast  readers 
who  have  the  faculty  of  getting  just  what  they  want  out  of 
a  book  in  a  brief  time  and  they  retain  the  thing  which  they 
have  sought.  Assuredly  I  envy  men  that  power.  For  my 
self,  I  have  never  found  any  royal  road  to  learning,  have 
been  a  slow  reader,  and  needed  a  re-reading,  sometimes 
more  than  one,  to  acquire  any  degree  of  mastery  of  a  book. 
Macaulay  used  to  read  his  favorite  Greek  and  Latin  classics 
over  and  over  again  and  presumably  always  with  care,  but 
modern  books  he  turned  off  with  extraordinary  speed.  Of 
Buckle's  large  volume  of  the  "History  of  Civilization" 
Macaulay  wrote  in  his  journal:  "I  read  Buckle's  book  all 
day,  and  got  to  the  end,  skipping,  of  course.  A  man  of 
talent  and  of  a  good  deal  of  reading,  but  paradoxical  and 
incoherent."  l  John  Fiske,  I  believe,  was  a  slow  reader,  but 
he  had  such  a  remarkable  power  of  concentration  that  what 
he  read  once  was  his  own.  Of  this  I  can  give  a  notable  in 
stance.  At  a  meeting  in  Boston  a  number  of  years  ago  of  the 

'Trevelyan,  II,  388,  n. 


70  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Military  Historical  Society  of  Massachusetts,  Colonel  William 
R.  Livermore  read  a  learned  and  interesting  paper  on  Napo 
leon's  Campaigns  in  Northern  Italy,  and  a  few  men,  among 
whom  were  Fiske  and  John  C.  Ropes,  remained  after  supper 
to  discuss  the  paper.  The  discussion  went  well  into  details 
and  was  technical.  Fiske  had  as  much  to  say  as  any  one 
and  met  the  military  critics  on  their  own  ground,  holding 
his  own  in  this  interchange  of  expert  opinions.  As  we  re 
turned  to  Cambridge  together,  I  expressed  my  surprise  at  his 
wide  technical  knowledge.  "It  is  all  due  to  one  book," 
he  said.  "A  few  summers  ago  I  had  occasion  to  read  Sir 
Edward  Hamley's  'Operations  of  War7  and  for  some  reason 
or  other  everything  in  it  seemed  to  sink  into  my  mind  and 
to  be  there  retained,  ready  for  use,  as  was  the  case  to-night 
with  his  references  to  the  Northern  Italian  campaigns." 

Outside  of  ordinary  historical  reading,  a  book  occurs  to 
me  which  is  well  worth  a  historian's  mastery.  I  am  as 
suming  that  our  hypothetical  student  has  read  Goethe's 
"Faust,"  "Werther,"  and  "Wilhelm  Meister,"  and  desires 
to  know  something  of  the  personality  of  this  great  writer. 
He  should,  therefore,  read  Eckermann's  "Conversations 
with  Goethe,"  in  which  he  will  find  a  body  of  profitable 
literary  criticism,  given  out  in  a  familiar  way  by  the  most 
celebrated  man  then  living.  The  talks  began  when  he  was 
seventy-three  and  continued  until  near  his  death,  ten  years 
later ;  they  reveal  his  maturity  of  judgment.  Greek,  Roman, 
German,  English,  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian  authors 
are  taken  up  from  time  to  time  and  discussed  with  clearness 
and  appreciation,  running  sometimes  to  enthusiasm.  As  a 
guide  to  the  best  reading  extant  up  to  1832  I  know  nothing 
better.  Eckermann  is  inferior  as  a  biographer  to  Boswell, 
and  his  book  is  neither  so  interesting  nor  amusing;  but 
Goethe  was  far  greater  than  Johnson,  and  his  talk  is  cosmo- 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  71 

politan  and  broad,  while  Johnson's  is  apt  to  be  insular  and 
narrow.  "One  should  not  study  contemporaries  and  com 
petitors/7  Goethe  said,  "but  the  great  men  of  antiquity, 
whose  works  have  for  centuries  received  equal  homage  and 
consideration.  .  .  .  Let  us  study  Moli£re,  let  us  study 
Shakespeare,  but  above  all  things,  the  old  Greeks  and  always 
the  Greeks."  1  Here  is  an  opinion  I  like  to  dwell  upon :  "He 
who  will  work  aright  must  never  rail,  must  not  trouble  him 
self  at  all  about  what  is  ill  done,  but  only  to  do  well  himself. 
For  the  great  point  is,  not  to  pull  down,  but  to  build  up  and 
in  this  humanity  finds  pure  joy."  2  It  is  well  worth  our 
while  to  listen  to  a  man  so  great  as  to  be  free  from  envy  and 
jealousy,  but  this  was  a  lesson  Carlyle  could  not  learn  from 
his  revered  master.  It  is  undoubtedly  his  broad  mind  in 
connection  with  his  wide  knowledge  which  induced  Sainte- 
Beuve  to  write  that  Goethe  is  "the  greatest  of  modern  critics 
and  of  critics  of  all  time."  3 

All  of  the  conversations  did  not  run  upon  literature  and 
writers.  Although  Goethe  never  visited  either  Paris  or 
London,  and  resided  for  a  good  part  of  his  life  in  the  little 
city  of  Weimar,  he  kept  abreast  of  the  world's  progress 
through  books,  newspapers,  and  conversations  with  visiting 
strangers.  No  statesman  or  man  of  business  could  have 
had  a  wider  outlook  than  Goethe,  when  on  February  21, 
1827,  he  thus  spoke:  "I  should  wish  to  see  England  in  pos 
session  of  a  canal  through  the  Isthmus  of  Suez.  .  .  .  And 
it  may  be  foreseen  that  the  United  States,  with  its  decided 
predilection  to  the  West  will,  in  thirty  or  forty  years,  have 
occupied  and  peopled  the  large  tract  of  land  beyond  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  It  may  furthermore  be  foreseen  that 
along  the  whole  coast  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  where  nature 
has  already  formed  the  most  capacious  and  secure  harbors, 

1  Eng.  trans.,  236.  2  Ibid.,  115.  3  Nouveaux  Lundis,  III,  265. 


72  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

important  commercial  towns  will  gradually  arise,  for  the 
furtherance  of  a  great  intercourse  between  China  and  the 
East  Indies  and  the  United  States.  In  such  a  case,  it  would 
not  only  be  desirable,  but  almost  necessary,  that  a  more 
rapid  communication  should  be  maintained  between  the 
eastern  and  western  shores  of  North  America,  both  by  mer 
chant  ships  and  men-of-war  than  has  hitherto  been  possible 
with  the  tedious,  disagreeable,  and  expensive  voyage  around 
Cape  Horn.  ...  It  is  absolutely  indispensable  for  the 
United  States  to  effect  a  passage  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to 
the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  I  am  certain  that  they  will  do  it. 
Would  that  I  might  live  to  see  it !"  l 

"  Eckermann's  book,"  wrote  Sainte-Beuve,  "is  the  best 
biography  of  Goethe ;  that  of  Lewes,  for  the  facts ;  that  of 
Eckermann,  for  the  portrait  from  the  inside  and  the  physiog 
nomy.  The  soul  of  a  great  man  breathes  in  it."  2 

I  have  had  frequent  occasion  to  speak  of  Sainte-Beuve 
and  I  cannot  recommend  our  student  too  strongly  to  read 
from  time  to  time  some  of  his  critical  essays.  His  best  work 
is  contained  in  the  fifteen  volumes  of  "Causeries  du  Lundi" 
and  in  the  thirteen  volumes  of  "Nouveaux  Lundis"  which 
were  articles  written  for  the  daily  newspapers,  the  Consti- 
tutionnel,  the  Moniteur,  and  the  Temps,  when,  between  the 
ages  of  forty-five  and  sixty-five,  he  was  at  the  maturity  of 
his  powers.  Considering  the  very  high  quality  of  the  work, 
the  quantity  is  enormous,  and  makes  us  call  to  mind  the  re 
mark  of  Goethe  that  "  genius  and  fecundity  are  very  closely 
allied."  Excluding  Goethe,  we  may  safely,  I  think,  call 
Sainte-Beuve  the  greatest  of  modern  critics,  and  there  is 
enough  of  resemblance  between  historical  and  literary  criti 
cism  to  warrant  a  study  by  the  historian  of  these  remarkable 
essays.  "The  root  of  everything  in  his  criticism,"  wrote 
1  Eng.  trans.,  222.  2  Nouveaux  Lundis,  III,  328. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  73 

Matthew  Arnold,  "is  his  single-hearted  devotion  to  truth. 
What  he  called  'fictions '  in  literature,  in  politics,  in  religion, 
were  not  allowed  to  influence  him."  And  Sainte-Beuve 
himself  has  said,  "I  am  accustomed  incessantly  to  call  my 
judgments  in  question  anew  and  to  recast  my  opinions  the 
moment  I  suspect  them  to  be  without  validity."  *  The 
writer  who  conforms  to  such  a  high  standard  is  an  excellent 
guide  for  the  historian  and  no  one  who  has  made  a  study  of 
these  Causeries  can  help  feeling  their  spirit  of  candor  and 
being  inspired  to  the  attempt  to  realize  so  high  an  ideal. 
Sainte-Beuve's  essays  deal  almost  entirely  with  French 
literature  and  history,  which  were  the  subjects  he  knew 
best.  It  is  very  desirable  for  us  Anglo-Saxons  to  broaden 
our  minds  and  soften  our  prejudices  by  excursions  outside 
of  our  own  literature  and  history,  and  with  Goethe  for  our 
guide  in  Germany,  we  can  do  no  better  than  to  accept  Sainte- 
Beuve  for  France.  Brunetiere  wrote  that  the  four  literary 
men  of  France  in  the  nineteenth  century  who  had  exer 
cised  the  most  profound  influence  were  Sainte-Beuve,  Bal 
zac,  Victor  Hugo,  and  Auguste  Comte.2  I  have  already 
recommended  Balzac,  who  portrays  the  life  of  the  nineteenth 
century;  and  Sainte-Beuve,  in  developing  the  thought  of 
the  same  period,  gives  us  a  history  of  French  literature  and 
society.  Moreover,  his  volumes  are  valuable  to  one  who  is 
studying  human  character  by  the  means  of  books.  "Sainte- 
Beuve  had,"  wrote  Henry  James,  "two  passions  which  are 
commonly  assumed  to  exclude  each  other,  the  passion  for 
scholarship  and  the  passion  for  life.  He  valued  life  and 
literature  equally  for  the  light  they  threw  on  each  other; 
to  his  mind,  one  implied  the  other;  he  was  unable  to  con 
ceive  of  them  apart."  3 

Supposing  the  student  to  have  devoted  five  years  to  this 
1  Enc.  Brit.        2  Balzac,  309.        3  Brander  Matthews,  Cent.  Mag.,  1901. 


74  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

general  preparation  and  to  have  arrived  at  the  age  of  thirty, 
which  Motley,  in  similar  advice  to  an  aspiring  historian, 
fixed  as  the  earliest  age  at  which  one  should  devote  himself 
to  his  special  work,  he  is  ready  to  choose  a  period  and  write 
a  history,  if  indeed  his  period  has  not  already  suggested 
itself  during  his  years  of  general  preparation.  At  all  events 
it  is  doubtless  that  his  own  predilection  will  fix  his  country 
and  epoch  and  the  only  counsel  I  have  to  offer  is  to  select 
an  interesting  period.  As  to  this,  opinions  will  differ ;  but 
I  would  say  for  example  that  the  attractive  parts  of  German 
history  are  the  Reformation,  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  the 
epoch  of  Frederick  the  Great,  and  the  unification  of  Germany 
which  we  have  witnessed  in  our  own  day.  The  French 
Revolution  is  to  me  the  most  striking  period  in  modern 
annals,  whilst  the  history  of  the  Directory  is  dull,  relieved 
only  by  the  exploits  of  Napoleon;  but  when  Napoleon  be 
comes  the  chief  officer  of  state,  interest  revives  and  we 
follow  with  unflagging  attention  the  story  of  this  master  of 
men,  for  which  there  is  a  superabundance  of  material,  in 
striking  contrast  with  the  little  that  is  known  about  his 
Titanic  predecessors,  Alexander  and  Caesar,  in  the  accounts 
of  whose  careers  conjecture  must  so  frequently  come  to  the 
aid  of  facts  to  construct  a  continuous  story.  The  Restora 
tion  and  the  reign  of  Louis  Philippe  would  for  me  be  dull 
periods  were  they  not  illumined  by  the  novels  of  Balzac; 
but  from  the  Revolution  of  1848  to  the  fall  of  the  Second 
Empire  and  the  Commune,  a  wonderful  drama  was  enacted. 
In  our  own  history  the  Revolutionary  War,  the  framing  of 
the  Constitution,  and  Washington's  administrations  seem 
to  me  replete  with  interest  which  is  somewhat  lacking  for 
the  period  between  Washington  and  the  slavery  conflict. 
"As  to  special  history,"  wrote  Motley  to  the  aspiring  his 
torian,  "I  should  be  inclined  rather  to  direct  your  attention 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  75 

to  that  of  the  last  three  and  a  half  centuries."  1  Discussing 
the  subject  before  the  advanced  historical  students  of  Har 
vard  a  number  of  years  ago,  I  gave  an  extension  to  Motley's 
counsel  by  saying  that  ancient  history  had  better  be  left  to 
the  Germans.  I  was  fresh  from  reading  Holm's  History 
of  Greece  and  was  impressed  with  his  vast  learning,  elabora 
tion  of  detail,  and  exhaustive  treatment  of  every  subject 
which  seemed  to  me  to  require  a  steady  application  and  pa 
tience,  hardly  consonant  with  the  American  character.  But 
within  the  past  five  years  Ferrero,  an  Italian,  has  demon 
strated  that  others  besides  Germans  are  equal  to  the  work 
by  writing  an  interesting  history  of  Rome,  which  intelligent 
men  and  scholars  discuss  in  the  same  breath  with  Momm- 
sen's.  Courageously  adopting  the  title  "  Grandeur  and 
Decadence  of  Rome"  which  suggests  that  of  Montesquieu, 
Ferrero  has  gleaned  the  well-reaped  field  from  the  appear 
ance  of  Julius  Caesar  to  the  reign  of  Augustus 2  in  a  manner 
to  attract  the  attention  of  the  reading  public  in  Italy, 
France,  England,  and  the  United  States.  There  is  no  reason 
why  an  American  should  not  have  done  the  same.  "All 
history  is  public  property,"  wrote  Motley  in  the  letter  pre 
viously  referred  to.  "All  history  may  be  rewritten  and  it 
is  impossible  that  with  exhaustive  research  and  deep  reflec 
tion  you  should  not  be  able  to  produce  something  new 
and  valuable  on  almost  any  subject."  3 

After  the  student  has  chosen  his  period  I  have  little  advice 
to  offer  him  beyond  what  I  have  previously  given  in  two 
formal  addresses  before  the  American  Historical  Association, 
but  a  few  additional  words  may  be  useful.  You  will  evolve 
your  own  method  by  practice  and  by  comparison  with  the 
methods  of  other  historians.  "Follow  your  own  star." 

1  Letter  of  April  4,  1864,  Harper's  Mag.,  June,  1889. 
2 1  speak  of  the  first  four  volumes.  3  L.c. 


76  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

If  you  feel  impelled  to  praise  or  blame  as  do  the  older  his 
torians,  if  it  is  forced  upon  you  that  your  subject  demands 
such  treatment,  proceed  fearlessly,  so  that  you  do  nothing 
for  effect,  so  that  you  do  not  sacrifice  the  least  particle  of 
truth  for  a  telling  statement.  If,  however,  you  fall  naturally 
into  the  rigorously  judicial  method  of  Gardiner  you  may 
feel  your  position  sure.  It  is  well,  as  the  scientific  his 
torians  warn  you,  to  be  suspicious  of  interesting  things,  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  every  interesting  incident  is  not  neces 
sarily  untrue.  If  you  have  made  a  conscientious  search 
for  historical  material  and  use  it  with  scrupulous  honesty, 
have  no  fear  that  you  will  transgress  any  reasonable  canon 
of  historical  writing. 

An  obvious  question  to  be  put  to  a  historian  is,  What 
plan  do  you  follow  in  making  notes  of  your  reading  ?  Lang- 
lois,  an  experienced  teacher  and  tried  scholar,  in  his  intro 
duction  to  the  " Study  of  History,"  condemns  the  natural 
impulse  to  set  them  down  in  notebooks  in  the  order  in 
which  one's  authorities  are  studied,  and  says,  "  Every  one 
admits  nowadays  that  it  is  advisable  to  collect  materials 
on  separate  cards  or  slips  of  paper/' l  arranging  them  by  a 
systematic  classification  of  subjects.  This  is  a  case  in  point 
where  writers  will,  I  think,  learn  best  from  their  own  ex 
perience.  I  have  made  my  notes  mainly  in  notebooks  on 
the  plan  which  Langlois  condemns,  but  by  colored  pencil- 
marks  of  emphasis  and  summary,  I  keep  before  me  the 
prominent  facts  which  I  wish  to  combine;  and  I  have 
found  this,  on  the  whole,  better  than  the  card  system.  For 
I  have  aimed  to  study  my  authorities  in  a  logical  succession. 
First  I  go  over  the  period  in  some  general  history,  if  one  is 
to  be  had ;  then  I  read  very  carefully  my  original  authori 
ties  in  the  order  of  their  estimated  importance,  making 

1  p.  103. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  77 

copious  excerpts.  Afterwards  I  skim  my  second-hand 
materials.  Now  I  maintain  that  it  is  logical  and  natural 
to  have  the  extracts  before  me  in  the  order  of  my  study. 
When  unusually  careful  and  critical  treatment  has  been 
required,  I  have  drawn  off  my  memoranda  from  the  note 
books  to  cards,  classifying  them  according  to  subjects. 
Such  a  method  enables  me  to  digest  thoroughly  my  mate 
rials,  but  in  the  main  I  find  that  a  frequent  re-perusal  of  my 
notes  answers  fully  as  well  and  is  an  economy  of  time. 

Carlyle,  in  answer  to  an  inquiry  regarding  his  own  pro 
cedure,  has  gone  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  "I  go  into  the 
business,"  he  said,  "with  all  the  intelligence,  patience, 
silence,  and  other  gifts  and  virtues  that  I  have  .  .  .  and 
on  the  whole  try  to  keep  the  whole  matter  simmering  in  the 
living  mind  and  memory  rather  than  laid  up  in  paper  bun 
dles  or  otherwise  laid  up  in  the  inert  way.  For  this  cer 
tainly  turns  out  to  be  a  truth ;  only  what  you  at  last  have 
living  in  your  own  memory  and  heart  is  worth  putting  down 
to  be  printed ;  this  alone  has  much  chance  to  get  into  the 
living  heart  and  memory  of  other  men.  And  here  indeed, 
I  believe,  is  the  essence  of  all  the  rules  I  have  ever  been  able 
to  devise  for  myself.  I  have  tried  various  schemes  of  ar 
rangement  and  artificial  helps  to  remembrance,"  but  the 
gist  of  the  matter  is,  "to  keep  the  thing  you  are  elaborating 
as  much  as  possible  actually  in  your  own  living  mind ;  in 
order  that  this  same  mind,  as  much  awake  as  possible,  may 
have  a  chance  to  make  something  of  it !"  1 

The  objection  may  be  made  to  my  discourse  that  I  have 
considered  our  student  as  possessing  the  purse  of  Fortuna- 
tus  and  have  lost  sight  of  Herbert  Spencer's  doctrine  that 
a  very  important  part  of  education  is  to  fit  a  man  to  acquire 
the  means  of  living.  I  may  reply  that  there  are  a  number 
1  New  Letters,  II,  11. 


78  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

of  Harvard  students  who  will  not  have  to  work  for  their 
bread  and  whose  parents  would  be  glad  to  have  them  follow 
the  course  that  I  have  recommended.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  hope,  therefore,  that  among  these  there  are,  to  use  Hux 
ley's  words,  "glorious  sports  of  nature"  who  will  not  be 
11  corrupted  by  luxury"  but  will  become  industrious  his 
torians.  To  others  who  are  not  so  fortunately  situated,  I 
cannot  recommend  the  profession  of  historian  as  a  means 
of  gaining  a  livelihood.  Bancroft  and  Parkman,  who  had  a 
good  deal  of  popularity,  spent  more  money  in  the  collection 
and  copying  of  documents  than  they  ever  received  as  in 
come  from  their  histories.  A  young  friend  of  mine,  at  the 
outset  of  his  career  and  with  his  living  in  part  to  be  earned, 
went  for  advice  to  Carl  Schurz,  who  was  very  fond  of  him. 
"What  is  your  aim?"  asked  Mr.  Schurz.  "I  purpose  being 
a  historian,"  was  the  reply.  "Aha!"  laughed  Schurz, 
"you  are  adopting  an  aristocratic  profession,  one  which 
requires  a  rent-roll."  Every  aspiring  historian  has,  I  sup 
pose,  dreamed  of  that  check  of  £20,000,  which  Macaulay 
received  as  royalty  on  his  history  for  its  sale  during  the  year 
1856, 1  but  no  such  dream  has  since  been  realized. 

Teaching  and  writing  are  allied  pursuits.  And  the  teacher 
helps  the  writer,  especially  in  history,  through  the  necessary 
elaboration  and  digestion  of  materials.  Much  excellent 
history  is  given  to  the  world  by  college  professors.  Law 
and  medicine  are  too  exacting  professions  with  too  large  a 
literature  of  their  own  to  leave  any  leisure  for  historical 
investigation.  If  one  has  the  opportunity  to  get  a  good 
start,  or,  in  the  talk  of  the  day,  the  right  sort  of  a  "pull," 
I  can  recommend  business  as  a  means  of  gaining  a  com 
petence  which  shall  enable  one  to  devote  one's  whole  time 
to  a  favorite  pursuit.  Grote  was  a  banker  until  he  reached 

1  Life,  II,  345, 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  HISTORIAN  79 

the  age  of  forty-nine  when  he  retired  from  the  banking  house 
and  began  the  composition  of  the  first  volume  of  his  history. 
Henry  C.  Lea  was  in  the  active  publishing  business  until  he 
was  fifty-five,  and  as  I  have  already  frequently  referred  to 
my  own  personal  experience,  I  may  add  that  I  was  immersed 
in  business  between  the  ages  of  twenty-two  and  thirty- 
seven.  After  three  years  of  general  and  special  preparation 
I  began  my  writing  at  forty.  The  business  man  has  many 
free  evenings  and  many  j  ourneys  by  rail,  as  well  as  a  summer 
vacation,  when  devotion  to  a  line  of  study  may  constitute 
a  valuable  recreation.  Much  may  be  done  in  odd  hours  in 
the  way  of  preparation  for  historical  work,  and  a  business 
life  is  an  excellent  school  for  the  study  of  human  character. 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES 

A  paper  read  before  the  American  Historical  Association  in  Wash 
ington  on  December  29,  1908;  printed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
May,  1909. 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES 

THE  impulse  of  an  American  writer  in  justifying  the  use 
of  newspapers  as  historical  materials  is  to  adopt  an  apolo 
getic  tone.  It  is  somewhat  curious  that  such  should  be 
the  case,  for  newspapers  satisfy  so  many  canons  of  histori 
cal  evidence.  They  are  contemporary,  and,  being  written 
without  knowledge  of  the  end,  cannot  bolster  any  cause 
without  making  a  plain  showing  of  their  intent.  Their 
object  is  the  relation  of  daily  events ;  and  if  their  relation  is 
colored  by  honest  or  dishonest  partisanship,  this  is  easily 
discernible  by  the  critic  from  the  internal  evidence  and 
from  an  easily  acquired  knowledge  of  a  few  external  facts. 
As  the  journals  themselves  say,  their  aim  is  to  print  the 
news ;  and  much  of  the  news  is  present  politics.  Moreover, 
the  newspaper  itself,  its  news  and  editorial  columns,  its 
advertisements,  is  a  graphic  picture  of  society. 

When  Aulard,  in  his  illuminating  criticism  of  Taine,  writes 
that  the  journals  are  a  very  important  source  of  the  history 
of  the  French  Revolution,  provided  they  are  revised  and 
checked  by  one  another,  the  statement  seems  in  accordance 
with  the  canons  of  historical  writing;  and  when  he  blames 
Taine  for  using  two  journals  only  and  neglecting  ten  others 
which  he  names,  the  impression  on  the  mind  is  the  same  as 
if  Taine  were  charged  with  the  neglect  of  evidence  of  an 
other  class.  One  would  hardly  attempt  to  justify  Taine 
by  declaring  that  all  journals  are  inaccurate,  partisan,  and 
dishonest,  and  that  the  omission  was  a  merit,  not  a  defect. 
Leaving  out  of  account  the  greater  size  and  diffuseness  of 
the  modern  journal,  the  dictum  of  Aulard  would  seem  to 
apply  to  any  period  of  history. 

83 


84  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Why  is  it  then  that  some  American  students  fall  con 
sciously  or  unconsciously  into  an  apologetic  tone  when  they 
attempt  to  justify  the  use  of  newspapers  as  historical 
sources?  I  suppose  it  is  because  of  the  attitude  of  culti 
vated  society  to  the  newspaper  of  to-day.  Society  calls  the 
ordinary  newspaper  sensational  and  unreliable;  and,  if 
neither,  its  accounts  are  so  diffuse  and  badly  proportioned 
as  to  weary  the  seeker  after  the  facts  of  any  given  transac 
tion.  Despite  the  disfavor  into  which  the  American  news 
paper  has  fallen  in  certain  circles,  I  suspect  that  it  has  only 
exaggerated  these  defects,  and  that  the  journals  of  different 
democracies  have  more  resemblances  than  diversities.  The 
newspaper  that  caters  to  the  "masses"  will  never  suit  the 
" classes,"  and  the  necessity  for  a  large  circulation  induces 
it  to  furnish  the  sheet  which  the  greatest  number  of  readers 
desire. 

But  this  does  not  concern  the  historian.  He  does  not 
make  his  materials.  He  has  to  take  them  as  they  are.  It 
would  undoubtedly  render  his  task  easier  if  all  men  spoke 
and  wrote  everywhere  with  accuracy  and  sincerity;  but 
his  work  would  lose  much  of  its  interest.  Take  the  news 
paper  for  what  it  is,  a  hasty  gatherer  of  facts,  a  hurried 
commentator  on  the  same,  and  it  may  well  constitute  a  part 
of  historical  evidence. 

When,  in  1887,  I  began  the  critical  study  of  the  History 
of  the  United  States  from  1850  to  1860, 1  was  struck  with  the 
paucity  of  material  which  would  serve  the  purpose  of  an 
animated  narrative.  The  main  facts  were  to  be  had  in  the 
state  papers,  the  Statutes,  the  Congressional  Globe  and  docu 
ments,  the  records  of  national  conventions  and  platforms, 
and  the  tabulated  results  of  elections.  But  there  was  much 
less  private  correspondence  than  is  available  for  the  early 
history  of  our  country;  and,  compared  with  the  period  of 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  85 

the  Civil  War  and  later,  a  scarcity  of  biographies  and  remi 
niscences,  containing  personal  letters  of  high  historical 
value.  Since  I  wrote  my  first  two  volumes,  much  new  mat 
ter  concerning  the  decade  of  1850  to  1860  has  been  published. 
The  work  of  the  American  Historical  Association,  and  of 
many  historical  societies,  the  monographs  of  advanced  uni 
versity  students,  have  thrown  light  upon  this,  as  they 
have  upon  other  periods,  with  the  result  that  future  delvers 
in  this  field  can  hardly  be  so  much  struck  with  the  paucity 
of  material  as  I  was  twenty-one  years  ago. 

Boy  though  I  was  during  the  decade  of  1850  to  1860, 1  had 
a  vivid  remembrance  of  the  part  that  the  newspaper  played 
in  politics,  and  the  thought  came  to  me  that  the  best  way 
to  arrive  at  the  spirit  of  the  times  was  to  steep  my  mind  in 
journalistic  material;  that  there  was  the  secret  of  living 
over  again  that  decade,  as  the  Abolitionist,  the  Republican, 
the  Whig,  and  the  Democrat  had  actually  lived  in  it.  In 
the  critical  use  of  such  sources,  I  was  helped  by  the  example 
of  von  Hoist,  who  employed  them  freely  in  his  volumes 
covering  the  same  period,  and  by  the  counsel  and  collabora 
tion  of  my  friend  Edward  G.  Bourne,  whose  training  was 
in  the  modern  school.  For  whatever  training  I  had  beyond 
that  of  self  came  from  the  mastery,  under  the  guidance  of 
teachers,  of  certain  general  historians  belonging  to  an  epoch 
when  power  of  expression  was  as  much  studied  as  the  col 
lecting  and  sifting  of  evidence. 

While  considering  my  materials,  I  was  struck  with  a 
statement  cited  by  Herbert  Spencer  as  an  illustration  in  his 
"  Philosophy  of  Style  "  :  "  A  modern  newspaper  statement, 
though  probably  true,  if  quoted  in  a  book  as  testimony, 
would  be  laughed  at;  but  the  letter  of  a  court  gossip,  if 
written  some  centuries  ago,  is  thought  good  historical  evi 
dence.  "  At  about  the  same  time,  I  noticed  that  Motley 


86  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

used  as  one  of  his  main  authorities  for  the  battle  of  St. 
Quentin  the  manuscript  of  an  anonymous  writer.  From 
these  two  circumstances,  it  was  a  logical  reflection  that 
some  historians  might  make  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  the 
value  of  manuscript  material  because  it  reposed  in  dusty 
archives  and  could  be  utilized  only  by  severe  labor  and 
long  patience;  and  that,  imbued  with  this  idea,  other  his 
torians  for  other  periods  might  neglect  the  newspaper  be 
cause  of  its  ready  accessibility. 

These  several  considerations  justified  a  belief,  arrived  at 
from  my  preliminary  survey  of  the  field,  that  the  use  of  news 
papers  as  sources  for  the  decade  of  1850  to  1860  was  desirable. 
At  each  step  of  my  pretty  thorough  study  of  them,  I  became 
more  and  more  convinced  that  I  was  on  the  right  track.  I 
found  facts  in  them  which  I  could  have  found  nowhere  else. 
The  public  meeting  is  a  great  factor  in  the  political  life  of 
this  decade,  and  is  most  fully  and  graphically  reported  in 
the  press.  The  newspaper,  too,  was  a  vehicle  for  personal 
accounts  of  a  quasi-confidential  nature,  of  which  I  can  give 
a  significant  example.  In  an  investigation  that  Edward 
Bourne  made  for  me  during  the  summer  of  1889,  he  came 
across  in  the  Boston  Courier  an  inside  account  of  the 
Whig  convention  of  1852,  showing,  more  conclusively  than 
I  have  seen  elsewhere,  the  reason  of  the  failure  to  unite  the 
conservative  Whigs,  who  were  apparently  in  a  majority,  on 
Webster.  From  collateral  evidence  we  were  convinced 
that  it  was  written  by  a  Massachusetts  delegate;  and  the 
Springfield  Republican,  which  copied  the  account,  furnished 
a  confirmation  of  it.  It  was  an  interesting  story,  and  I 
incorporated  it  in  my  narrative. 

I  am  well  aware  that  Dr.  Dryasdust  may  ask,  What  of  it  ? 
The  report  of  the  convention  shows  that  Webster  received 
a  very  small  vote  and  that  Scott  was  nominated.  Why 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  87 

waste  time  and  words  over  the  "might  have  been"?  I  can 
plead  only  the  human  interest  in  the  great  Daniel  Webster 
ardently  desiring  that  nomination,  Rufus  Choate  advo 
cating  it  in  sublime  oratory,  the  two  antislavery  delegates 
from  Massachusetts  refusing  their  votes  for  Webster,  thus 
preventing  a  unanimous  Massachusetts,  and  the  delegates 
from  Maine,  among  whom  was  Webster's  godson  William  P. 
Fessenden,  coldly  refusing  their  much-needed  aid. 

General  Scott,  having  received  the  nomination,  made  a 
stumping  tour  in  the  autumn  through  some  of  the  Western 
States.  No  accurate  account  of  it  is  possible  without  the 
newspapers,  yet  it  was  esteemed  a  factor  in  his  overwhelming 
defeat,  and  the  story  of  it  is  well  worth  preserving  as  data 
for  a  discussion  of  the  question,  Is  it  wise  for  a  presidential 
candidate  to  make  a  stumping  tour  during  his  electoral 
campaign  ? 

The  story  of  the  formation  of  the  Republican  party,  and 
the  rise  of  the  Know-nothings,  may  possibly  be  written 
without  recourse  to  the  newspapers,  but  thorough  steeping 
in  such  material  cannot  fail  to  add  to  the  animation  and  ac 
curacy  of  the  story.  In  detailed  history  and  biographical 
books,  dates,  through  mistakes  of  the  writer  or  printer, 
are  frequently  wrong;  and  when  the  date  was  an  affair  of 
supreme  importance,  I  have  sometimes  found  a  doubt  re 
solved  by  a  reference  to  the  newspaper,  which,  from  its 
strictly  contemporary  character,  cannot  in  such  a  matter 
lead  one  astray. 

I  found  the  newspapers  of  value  in  the  correction  of  logical 
assumptions,  which  frequently  appear  in  American  historical 
and  biographical  books,  especially  in  those  written  by  men 
who  bore  a  part  in  public  affairs.  By  a  logical  assumption, 
I  mean  the  statement  of  a  seemingly  necessary  consequence 
which  apparently  ought  to  follow  some  well-attested  fact  or 


88  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

condition.  A  striking  instance  of  this  occurred  during  the 
political  campaign  of  1856,  when  "  bleeding  Kansas "  was  a 
thrilling  catchword  used  by  the  Republicans,  whose  candi 
date  for  president  was  Fremont.  In  a  year  and  a  half  seven 
free-state  men  had  been  killed  in  Kansas  by  the  border 
ruffians,  and  these  outrages,  thoroughly  ventilated,  made 
excellent  campaign  ammunition.  But  the  Democrats  had 
a  tu  quoque  argument  which  ought  to  have  done  much  to 
wards  eliminating  this  question  from  the  canvass. 

On  the  night  of  May  24,  1856,  five  pro-slavery  men,  living 
on  the  Pottawatomie  Creek,  were  deliberately  and  foully 
murdered  by  John  Brown  and  seven  of  his  disciples;  and, 
while  this  massacre  caused  profound  excitement  in  Kansas 
and  Missouri,  it  seems  to  have  had  no  influence  east  of  the 
Mississippi  River,  although  the  fact  was  well  attested.  A 
Kansas  journalist  of  1856,  writing  in  1879,  made  this  logical 
assumption:  "The  opposition  press  both  North  and  South 
took  up  the  damning  tale  ...  of  that  midnight  butchery 
on  the  Pottawatomie.  .  .  .  Whole  columns  of  leaders 
from  week  to  week,  with  startling  headlines,  liberally  dis 
tributed  capitals,  and  frightful  exclamation  points,  filled 
all  the  newspapers."  And  it  was  his  opinion  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  this  massacre,  Fremont  would  have  been  elected. 

But  I  could  not  discover  that  the  massacre  had  any  in 
fluence  on  the  voters  in  the  pivotal  states.  I  examined, 
or  had  examined,  the  files  of  the  New  York  Journal  of 
Commerce,  New  York  Heraldj  Philadelphia  Pennsylvanian, 
Washington  Union,  and  Cleveland  Plain  Dealer,  all  Demo 
cratic  papers  except  the  New  York  Herald,  and  I  was  struck 
with  the  fact  that  substantially  no  use  was  made  of  the  mas 
sacre  as  a  campaign  argument.  Yet  could  anything  have 
been  more  logical  than  the  assumption  that  the  Democrats 
would  have  been  equal  to  their  opportunity  and  spread  far 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  89 

and  wide  such  a  story?  The  facts  in  the  case  show  there 
fore  that  cause  and  effect  in  actual  American  history  are 
not  always  the  same  as  the  statesman  may  conceive  them 
in  his  cabinet  or  the  historian  in  his  study. 

In  the  newspapers  of  1850  to  1860  many  speeches,  and 
many  public,  and  some  private,  letters  of  conspicuous  public 
men  are  printed ;  these  are  valuable  material  for  the  history 
of  the  decade,  and  their  use  is  in  entire  accordance  with 
modern  historical  canons. 

I  have  so  far  considered  the  press  in  its  character  of  a 
register  of  facts ;  but  it  has  a  further  use  for  historical  pur 
poses,  since  it  is  both  a  representative  and  guide  of  public 
sentiment.  Kinglake  shows  that  the  Times  was  the  potent 
influence  which  induced  England  to  invade  the  Crimea; 
Bismarck  said  in  1877  that  the  press  "was  the  cause  of  the 
last  three  wars";  Lord  Cromer  writes,  "The  people  of  Eng 
land  as  represented  by  the  press  insisted  on  sending  General 
Gordon  to  the  Soudan,  and  accordingly  to  the  Soudan  he 
was  sent;"  and  it  is  current  talk  that  the  yellow  journals 
brought  on  the  Spanish-American  War.  Giving  these  state 
ments  due  weight,  can  a  historian  be  justified  in  neglecting 
the  important  influence  of  the  press  on  public  opinion  ? 

As  reflecting  and  leading  popular  sentiment  during  the 
decade  of  1850  to  1860,  the  newspapers  of  the  Northern 
States  were  potent.  I  own  that  many  times  one  needs  no 
further  index  to  public  sentiment  than  our  frequent  elec 
tions,  but  in  1854  conditions  were  peculiar.  The  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise  had  outraged  the  North  and  in 
dicated  that  a  new  party  must  be  formed  to  resist  the  ex 
tension  of  slavery.  In  the  disorganization  of  the  Demo 
cratic  party,  and  the  effacement  of  the  Whig,  nowhere  may 
the  new  movement  so  well  be  traced  as  in  the  news  and 
editorial  columns  of  the  newspapers,  and  in  the  speeches  of 


90  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  Northern  leaders,  many  of  these  indeed  being  printed 
nowhere  else  than  in  the  press.  What  journals  and  what 
journalists  there  were  in  those  days!  Greeley  and  Dana 
of  the  New  York  Tribune;  Bryant  and  Bigelow  of  the 
Evening  Post;  Raymond  of  the  Times;  Webb  of  the  Courier 
and  Enquirer;  Bowles  of  the  Springfield  Republican;  Thur- 
low  Weed  of  the  Albany  Journal;  Schouler  of  the  Cincinnati 
Gazette,  —  all  inspired  by  their  opposition  to  the  spread  of 
slavery,  wrote  with  vigor  and  enthusiasm,  representing  the 
ideas  of  men  who  had  burning  thoughts  without  power  of 
expression,  and  guiding  others  who  needed  the  constant 
iteration  of  positive  opinions  to  determine  their  political 
action. 

The  main  and  cross  currents  which  resulted  in  the  for 
mation  of  the  compact  Republican  party  of  1856  have  their 
principal  record  in  the  press,  and  from  it,  directly  or  in 
directly,  must  the  story  be  told.  Unquestionably  the  news 
papers  had  greater  influence  than  in  an  ordinary  time, 
because  the  question  was  a  moral  one  and  could  be  concretely 
put.  Was  slavery  right  or  wrong?  If  wrong,  should  not 
its  extension  be  stopped?  That  was  the  issue,  and  all  the 
arguments,  constitutional  and  social,  turned  on  that  point. 

The  greatest  single  journalistic  influence  was  the  New 
York  Weekly  Tribune  which  had  in  1854  a  circulation  of 
112,000,  and  many  times  that  number  of  readers.  These 
readers  were  of  the  thorough  kind,  reading  all  the  news,  all 
the  printed  speeches  and  addresses,  and  all  the  editorials, 
and  pondering  as  they  read.  The  questions  were  discussed 
in  their  family  circles  and  with  their  neighbors,  and,  as 
differences  arose,  the  Tribune,  always  at  hand,  was  consulted 
and  re-read.  There  being  few  popular  magazines  during 
this  decade,  the  weekly  newspaper,  in  some  degree,  took 
their  place;  and,  through  this  medium,  Greeley  and  his 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  91 

able  coadjutors  spoke  to  the  people  of  New  York  and  of 
the  West,  where  New  England  ideas  predominated,  with  a 
power  never  before  or  since  known  in  this  country.  When 
Motley  was  studying  the  old  letters  and  documents  of  the 
sixteenth  century  in  the  archives  of  Brussels,  he  wrote: 
"It  is  something  to  read  the  real  bona  fide  signs  manual  of 
such  fellows  as  William  of  Orange,  Count  Egmont,  Alex 
ander  Farnese,  Philip  the  Second,  Cardinal  Granville  and 
the  rest  of  them.  It  gives  a  '  realizing  sense/  as  the  Ameri 
cans  have  it."  I  had  somewhat  of  the  same  feeling  as  I 
turned  over  the  pages  of  the  bound  volumes  of  the  Weekly 
Tribune,  reading  the  editorials  and  letters  of  Greeley,  the 
articles  of  Dana  and  Hildreth.  I  could  recall  enough  of 
the  time  to  feel  the  influence  of  this  political  bible,  as  it  was 
termed,  and  I  can  emphatically  say  that  if  you  want  to  pene 
trate  into  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and  ground  of  decision 
of  the  1,866,000  men  who  voted  for  Lincoln  in  1860,  you 
should  study  with  care  the  New  York  Weekly  Tribune. 

One  reason  why  the  press  was  a  better  representative  of 
opinion  during  the  years  from  1854  to  1860  than  now  is 
that  there  were  few,  if  any,  independent  journals.  The 
party  man  read  his  own  newspaper  and  no  other;  in  that, 
he  found  an  expression  of  his  own  views.  And  the  party 
newspaper  in  the  main  printed  only  the  speeches  and  argu 
ments  of  its  own  side.  Greeley  on  one  occasion  was  asked 
by  John  Russell  Young,  an  associate,  for  permission  to  re 
print  a  speech  of  Horatio  Seymour  in  full  as  a  matter  of 
news.  "Yes,"  Greeley  said,  "I  will  print  Seymour's  speech 
when  the  World  will  print  those  of  our  side." 

Before  the  war,  Charleston  was  one  of  the  most  interesting 
cities  of  the  country.  It  was  a  small  aristocratic  community, 
with  an  air  of  refinement  and  distinction.  The  story  of 
Athens  proclaims  that  a  large  population  is  not  necessary 


92  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

to  exercise  a  powerful  influence  on  the  world;  and,  after 
the  election  of  Lincoln  in  I860,  the  40,000  people  of  Charles 
ton,  or  rather  the  few  patricians  who  controlled  its  fate  and 
that  of  South  Carolina,  attracted  the  attention  of  the  whole 
country.  The  story  of  the  secession  movement  of  Novem 
ber  and  December,  1860,  cannot  be  told  with  correctness 
and  life  without  frequent  references  to  the  Charleston  Mer 
cury  and  the  Charleston  Courier.  The  Mercury  especially 
was  an  index  of  opinion,  and  so  vivid  is  its  daily  chronicle 
of  events  that  the  historian  is  able  to  put  himself  in  the 
place  of  those  ardent  South  Carolinians  and  understand 
their  point  of  view. 

For  the  history  of  the  Civil  War,  newspapers  are  not  so 
important.  The  other  material  is  superabundant,  and  in 
choosing  from  the  mass  of  it,  the  newspapers,  so  far  as  affairs 
at  the  North  are  concerned,  need  only  be  used  in  special 
cases,  and  rarely  for  matters  of  fact.  The  accounts  of  cam 
paigns  and  battles,  which  filled  so  much  of  their  space,  may 
be  ignored,  as  the  best  possible  authorities  for  these  are  the 
one  hundred  and  twenty-eight  volumes  of  the  United  States 
government  publication,  the  "  Official  Records  of  the  Union 
and  Confederate  armies."  The  faithful  study  of  the  cor 
respondence  and  the  reports  in  these  unique  volumes  is 
absolutely  essential  to  a  comprehension  of  the  war;  and  it 
is  a  labor  of  love.  When  one  thinks  of  the  mass  of  manu 
scripts  students  of  certain  periods  of  European  history  have 
been  obliged  to  read,  the  American  historian  is  profoundly 
grateful  to  his  government,  that  at  a  cost  to  itself  of  nearly 
three  million  dollars,1  it  has  furnished  him  this  priceless 
material  in  neatly  printed  volumes  with  excellent  indexes. 
The  serious  student  can  generally  procure  these  volumes 

1  $2,858,514,  without  including  the  pay  of  army  officers  detailed  from 
time  to  time  for  duty  in  connection  with  the  work.  Official  Records,  130,  V. 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  93 

gratis  through  the  favor  of  his  congressman;  or,  failing  in 
this,  may  purchase  the  set  at  a  moderate  price,  so  that  he  is 
not  obliged  to  go  to  a  public  library  to  consult  them. 

Next  to  manuscript  material,  the  physical  and  mental 
labor  of  turning  over  and  reading  bound  volumes  of  news 
papers  is  the  most  severe,  and  I  remember  my  feeling  of  re 
lief  at  being  able  to  divert  my  attention  from  what  Edward  L. 
Pierce  called  this  back-breaking  and  eye-destroying  labor, 
much  of  it  in  public  libraries,  to  these  convenient  books  in 
my  own  private  library.  A  mass  of  other  materials,  nota 
bly  Nicolay  and  Hay's  contributions,  military  narratives, 
biographies,  private  correspondence,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
Congressional  publications,  render  the  student  fairly  inde 
pendent  of  the  newspapers.  But  I  did  myself  make,  for 
certain  periods,  special  researches  among  them  to  ascertain 
their  influence  on  public  sentiment ;  and  I  also  found  them 
very  useful  in  my  account  of  the  New  York  draft  riots  of 
1863.  It  is  true  the  press  did  not  accurately  reflect  the 
gloom  and  sickness  of  heart  at  the  North  after  the  battle 
of  Chancellorsville,  for  the  reason  that  many  editors  wrote 
for  the  purpose  of  keeping  up  the  hopes  of  their  readers.  In 
sum,  the  student  may  congratulate  himself  that  a  continu 
ous  study  of  the  Northern  newspapers  for  the  period  of  the 
Civil  War  is  unnecessary,  for  their  size  and  diffuseness  are 
appalling. 

But  what  I  have  said  about  the  press  of  the  North  will 
not  apply  to  that  of  the  South.  Though  strenuous  efforts 
have  been  made,  with  the  diligent  cooperation  of  Southern 
men,  to  secure  the  utmost  possible  amount  of  Confederate  ma 
terial  for  the  "  Official  Records/'  it  actually  forms  only  about 
twenty-nine  per  cent  of  the  whole  matter.  Other  historical 
material  is  also  less  copious.  For  example,  there  is  no  record 
of  the  proceedings  of  the  Confederate  Congress,  like  the 


94  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Globe;  there  are  no  reports  of  committees,  like  that  of  the 
Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War ;  and  even  the  journal 
of  the  Congress  was  kept  on  loose  memoranda,  and  not 
written  up  until  after  the  close  of  the  war.  With  the  ex 
ception  of  this  journal,  which  has  been  printed  by  our  gov 
ernment,  and  the  "  Statutes  at  Large,"  our  information  of 
the  work  of  the  Confederate  Congress  comes  from  the  news 
papers  and  some  books  of  biography  and  recollections. 
The  case  of  the  Southern  States  was  peculiar,  because  they 
were  so  long  cut  off  from  intercourse  with  the  outer  world, 
owing  to  the  efficient  Federal  blockade ;  and  the  newspaper 
in  its  local  news,  editorials,  and  advertisements,  is  important 
material  for  portraying  life  in  the  Confederacy  during  the 
Civil  War.  Fortunately  for  the  student,  the  Southern 
newspaper  was  not  the  same  voluminous  issue  as  the  Nor 
thern,  and,  if  it  had  not  been  badly  printed,  its  use  would 
be  attended  with  little  difficulty.  Owing  to  the  scarcity  of 
paper,  many  of  the  newspapers  were  gradually  reduced  in 
size,  and  in  the  end  were  printed  on  half-sheets,  occasionally 
one  on  brown  paper,  and  another  on  wall  paper;  even  the 
white  paper  was  frequently  coarse,  and  this,  with  poor  type, 
made  the  news-sheet  itself  a  daily  record  of  the  waning 
fortunes  of  the  Confederacy. 

In  the  history  of  Reconstruction  the  historian  may  be  to 
a  large  extent  independent  of  the  daily  newspaper.  For 
the  work  of  reconstruction  was  done  by  Congress,  and 
Congress  had  the  full  support  of  the  Northern  people,  as  was 
shown  by  the  continuous  large  Republican  majority  which 
was  maintained.  The  debates,  the  reports,  and  the  acts  of 
Congress  are  essential,  and  little  else  is  required  except  what 
ever  private  correspondence  may  be  accessible.  Congress 
represented  public  sentiment  of  the  North,  and  if  one  de 
sires  newspaper  opinion,  one  may  find  it  in  many  pithy 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  95 

expressions  on  the  floor  of  the  House  or  the  Senate.  For  the 
congressman  and  the  senator  are  industrious  newspaper 
readers.  They  are  apt  to  read  some  able  New  York  journal 
which  speaks  for  their  party,  and  the  congressman  will 
read  the  daily  and  weekly  newspapers  of  his  district,  and 
the  senator  the  prominent  ones  of  his  state  which  belong 
to  his  party. 

For  the  period  which  covered  Reconstruction,  from  1865 
to  1877,  I  used  the  Nation  to  a  large  extent.  Its  bound 
volumes  are  convenient  to  handle  in  one's  own  library,  and 
its  summary  of  events  is  useful  in  itself,  and  as  giving  leads 
to  the  investigation  of  other  material.  Frequently  its 
editorials  have  spoken  for  the  sober  sense  of  the  people  with 
amazing  success.  As  a  constant  reader  of  the  Nation  since 
1866,  I  have  felt  the  fascination  of  Godkin,  and  have  been 
consciously  on  guard  against  it.  I  tried  not  to  be  led  away 
by  his  incisive  statements  and  sometimes  uncharitable 
judgments.  But  whatever  may  be  thought  of  his  bias,  he 
had  an  honest  mind,  and  was  incapable  of  knowingly  making 
a  false  statement ;  and  this,  with  his  other  qualities,  makes 
his  journal  excellent  historical  material.  After  considering 
with  great  care  some  friendly  criticism,  I  can  truly  say  that 
I  have  no  apology  to  make  for  the  extent  to  which  I  used 
the  Nation. 

Recurring  now  to  the  point  with  which  I  began  this  dis 
cussion,  —  that  learned  prejudice  against  employing  news 
papers  as  historical  material,  —  I  wish  to  add  that,  like  all 
other  evidence,  they  must  be  used  with  care  and  skepticism, 
as  one  good  authority  is  undoubtedly  better  than  a  dozen 
poor  ones.  An  anecdote  I  heard  years  ago  has  been  useful 
to  me  in  weighing  different  historical  evidence.  A  Penn 
sylvania-Dutch  justice  of  the  peace  in  one  of  the  interior 
townships  of  Ohio  had  a  man  arraigned  before  him  for 


96  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

stealing  a  pig.  One  witness  swore  that  he  distinctly  saw  the 
theft  committed;  eight  swore  that  they  never  saw  the  ac 
cused  steal  a  pig,  and  the  verdict  was  worthy  of  Dogberry. 
"I  discharge  the  accused,"  said  the  justice.  "The  testi 
mony  of  eight  men  is  certainly  worth  more  than  the  testi 
mony  of  one." 

Private  and  confidential  correspondence  is  highly  valuable 
historical  material,  for  such  utterances  are  less  constrained 
and  more  sincere  than  public  declarations ;  but  all  men  cannot 
be  rated  alike.  Some  men  have  lied  as  freely  in  private  let 
ters  as  in  public  speeches ;  therefore  the  historian  must  get  at 
the  character  of  the  man  who  has  written  the  letter  and  the 
influences  surrounding  him ;  these  factors  must  count  in  any 
satisfactory  estimate  of  his  accuracy  and  truth.  The  news 
paper  must  be  subjected  to  similar  tests.  For  example,  to 
test  an  article  or  public  letter  written  by  Greeley  or  God  kin, 
the  general  situation,  the  surrounding  influences,  and  the 
individual  bias  must  be  taken  into  account,  and,  when  al 
lowance  is  made  for  these  circumstances,  as  well  as  for  the 
public  character  of  the  utterance,  it  may  be  used  for  his 
torical  evidence.  For  the  history  of  the  last  half  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  just  such  material  —  the  material  of  the 
fourth  estate  —  must  be  used.  Neglect  of  it  would  be  like 
neglect  of  the  third  estate  in  the  history  of  France  for  the 
eighteenth  century. 

In  the  United  States  we  have  not,  politically  speaking, 
either  the  first  or  second  estates,  but  we  have  the  third  and 
fourth  estates  with  an  intimate  connection  between  the  two. 
Lord  Cromer  said,  when  writing  of  the  sending  of  Gordon 
to  the  Soudan,  "  Newspaper  government  has  certain  dis 
advantages;"  and  this  he  emphasized  by  quoting  a  wise 
remark  of  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis,  "  Anonymous  au 
thorship  places  the  public  under  the  direction  of  guides  who 


NEWSPAPERS  AS  HISTORICAL  SOURCES  97 

have  no  sense  of  personal  responsibility."  Nevertheless 
this  newspaper  government  must  be  reckoned  with.  The 
duty  of  the  historian  is,  not  to  decide  if  the  newspapers  are 
as  good  as  they  ought  to  be,  but  to  measure  their  influence 
on  the  present,  and  to  recognize  their  importance  as  an 
ample  and  contemporary  record  of  the  past. 


SPEECH  PREPARED  FOR  THE  COMMENCEMENT 
DINNER  AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

June  26,  1901  (not  delivered). 


SPEECH   PREPARED   FOR    THE   COMMENCEMENT 
DINNER  AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

THANKING  heartily  the  governing  boards  of  Harvard 
College  for  the  honor  conferred  upon  me,  I  shall  say,  on 
this  my  first  admission  to  the  circle  of  the  Harvard  alumni, 
a  word  on  the  University  as  it  appears  to  one  whose  work 
has  lain  outside  of  it.  The  spirit  of  the  academy  in  general 
and  especially  of  this  University  impels  men  to  get  to  the 
bottom  of  things,  to  strive  after  exact  knowledge ;  and  this 
spirit  permeates  my  own  study  of  history  in  a  remarkable 
degree.  "The  first  of  all  Gospels  is  this,"  said  Carlyle, 
"that  a  lie  cannot  endure  forever."  This  is  the  gospel  of 
historical  students.  A  part  of  their  work  has  been  to  ex 
pose  popular  fallacies,  and  to  show  up  errors  which  have 
been  made  through  partiality  and  misguided  patriotism  or 
because  of  incomplete  investigation.  Men  of  my  age  are 
obliged  to  unlearn  much.  The  youthful  student  of  history 
has  a  distinct  advantage  over  us  in  that  he  begins  with  a 
correct  knowledge  of  the  main  historical  facts.  He  does 
not  for  example  learn  what  we  all  used  to  learn  —  that  in 
the  year  1000  the  appearance  of  a  fiery  comet  caused  a  panic 
of  terror  to  fall  upon  Christendom  and  gave  rise  to  the  be 
lief  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  at  hand.  Nor  is  he  taught 
that  the  followers  of  Peter  the  Hermit  in  the  first  crusade 
were  a  number  of  spiritually  minded  men  and  women  of 
austere  morality.  It  is  to  the  University  that  we  owe  it  that 
we  are  seeing  things  as  they  are  in  history,  that  the  fables, 
the  fallacies,  and  the  exaggerations  are  disappearing  from 
the  books. 

101 


102  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

To  regard  the  past  with  accuracy  and  truth  is  a  prepara 
tion  for  envisaging  the  present  in  the  same  way.  For  this 
attitude  towards  the  past  and  the  present  gained  by  college 
students  of  history,  and  for  other  reasons  which  it  is  not 
necessary  here  to  detail,  the  man  of  University  training  has, 
other  things  being  equal,  this  advantage  over  him  who  lacks 
it,  that  in  life  in  the  world  he  will  get  at  things  more  cer 
tainly  and  state  them  more  accurately. 

"A  university,"  said  Lowell,  "is  a  place  where  nothing 
useful  is  taught."  By  utility  Lowell  undoubtedly  meant, 
to  use  the  definition  which  Huxley  puts  into  the  average 
Englishman's  mouth,  "that  by  which  we  get  pudding  or 
praise  or  both."  A  natural  reply  to  the  statement  of  Lowell 
is  that  great  numbers  of  fathers  every  year,  at  a  pecuniary 
sacrifice,  send  their  sons  to  college  with  the  idea  of  fitting 
them  better  to  earn  their  living,  in  obedience  to  the  general 
sentiment  of  men  of  this  country  that  there  is  a  money 
value  to  college  training.  But  the  remark  of  Lowell  sug 
gests  another  object  of  the  University  which,  to  use  the  words 
of  Huxley  again,  is  "to  catch  the  exceptional  people,  the  glo 
rious  sports  of  nature,  and  turn  them  to  account  for  the 
good  of  society."  This  appeals  to  those  imbued  with  the 
spirit  of  the  academy  who  frankly  acknowledge,  in  the  main, 
our  inferiority  in  the  scholarship,  which  produces  great 
works  of  literature  and  science,  to  England,  Germany,  and 
France,  and  who  with  patriotic  eagerness  wish  that  we  may 
reach  the  height  attained  in  the  older  countries.  To  recur 
to  my  own  study  again,  should  we  produce  a  historian  or 
historical  writer  the  equal  of  Gibbon,  Mommsen,  Carlyle, 
or  Macaulay  there  would  be  a  feeling  of  pride  in  our  historical 
genius  which  would  make  itself  felt  at  every  academical 
and  historical  gathering.  We  have  something  of  that  sen 
timent  in  regard  to  Francis  Parkman,  our  most  original 


SPEECH  AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY  103 

historian.  But  it  may  be  that  the  historical  field  of  Park- 
man  is  too  narrow  to  awaken  a  world-wide  interest  and  I 
suspect  that  the  American  who  will  be  recognized  as  the 
equal  of  Gibbon,  Mommsen,  Carlyle,  or  Macaulay  must  se 
cure  that  recognition  by  writing  of  some  period  of  European 
history  better  than  the  Englishman,  German,  or  Frenchman 
has  written  of  it.  He  must  do  it  not  only  in  the  way  of 
scientific  history,  in  which  in  his  field  Henry  Charles  Lea  has 
won  so  much  honor  for  himself  and  his  country,  but  he 
must  bring  to  bear  on  his  history  that  quality  which 
has  made  the  historical  writings  of  Gibbon,  Carlyle,  and 
Macaulay  literature. 


EDWAED   GIBBON 

Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University,  April  6,  1908,  and  printed  in 
Berliner's  Magazine,  June,  1909. 


EDWARD  GIBBON 

No  English  or  American  lover  of  history  visits  Rome 
without  bending  reverent  footsteps  to  the  Church  of  Santa 
Maria  in  Ara  Coeli.  Two  visits  are  necessary,  as  on  the  first 
you  are  at  once  seized  by  the  sacristan,  who  can  conceive 
of  no  other  motive  for  entering  this  church  on  the  Capitol 
Hill  than  to  see  the  miraculous  Bambino  —  the  painted 
doll  swaddled  in  gold  and  silver  tissue  and  "  crusted  over 
with  magnificent  diamonds,  emeralds,  and  rubies."  When 
you  have  heard  the  tale  of  what  has  been  called  "the  oldest 
medical  practitioner  in  Rome,"  of  his  miraculous  cures,  of 
these  votive  offerings,  the  imaginary  picture  you  had  con 
jured  up  is  effaced;  and  it  is  better  to  go  away  and  come 
a  second  time  when  the  sacristan  will  recognize  you  and 
leave  you  to  yourself.  Then  you  may  open  your  Gibbon's 
Autobiography  and  read  that  it  was  the  subtle  influence 
of  Italy  and  Rome  that  determined  the  choice,  from  amongst 
many  contemplated  subjects  of  historical  writing,  of  "The 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  "In  my  Journal," 
wrote  Gibbon,  "the  place  and  moment  of  conception  are 
recorded;  the  15th  of  October,  1764,  in  the  close  of  the 
evening,  as  I  sat  musing  in  the  Church  of  the  Franciscan 
friars  while  they  were  singing  vespers  in  the  Temple  of 
Jupiter  on  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol."  *  Gibbon  was  twenty- 
seven  when  he  made  this  fruitful  visit  of  eighteen  weeks  to 
Rome,  and  his  first  impression,  though  often  quoted,  never 
loses  interest,  showing,  as  it  does,  the  enthusiasm  of  an  un 
emotional  man.  "At  the  distance  of  twenty-five  years," 

1  Autobiography,  270. 
107 


108  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

he  wrote,  "I  can  neither  forget  nor  express  the  strong  emo 
tions  which  agitated  my  mind  as  I  first  approached  and 
entered  the  Eternal  City.  After  a  sleepless  night,  I  trod 
with  a  lofty  step  the  ruins  of  the  Forum ;  each  memorable 
spot  where  Romulus  stood  or  Cicero  spoke  or  Caesar  fell  was 
at  once  present  to  my  eye." 

The  admirer  of  Gibbon  as  he  travels  northward  will  stop 
at  Lausanne  and  visit  the  hotel  which  bears  the  historian's 
name.  Twice  have  I  taken  luncheon  in  the  garden  where 
he  wrote  the  last  words  of  his  history ;  and  on  a  third  visit, 
after  lunching  at  another  inn,  I  could  not  fail  to  admire  the 
penetration  of  the  Swiss  concierge.  As  I  alighted,  he  seemed 
to  divine  at  once  the  object  of  my  visit,  and  before  I  had 
half  the  words  of  explanation  out  of  my  mouth,  he  said, 
"Oh,  yes.  It  is  this  way.  But  I  cannot  show  you  anything 
but  a  spot."  I  have  quoted  from  Gibbon's  Autobiography 
the  expression  of  his  inspiration  of  twenty-seven ;  a  fitting 
companion-piece  is  the  reflection  of  the  man  of  fifty.  "I 
have  presumed  to  mark  the  moment  of  conception,"  he 
wrote;  "I  shall  now  commemorate  the  hour  of  my  final 
deliverance.  It  was  on  the  day,  or  rather  the  night,  of  the 
27th  of  June,  1787,  between  the  hours  of  eleven  and  twelve, 
that  I  wrote  the  last  lines  of  the  last  page  in  a  summer-house 
in  my  garden.  ...  I  will  not  dissemble  the  first  emotions 
of  joy  on  the  recovery  of  my  freedom  and  perhaps  the  es 
tablishment  of  my  fame.  But  my  pride  was  soon  humbled, 
and  a  sober  melancholy  was  spread  over  my  mind  by  the 
idea  that  I  had  taken  my  everlasting  leave  of  an  old  and 
agreeable  companion."  * 

Although  the  idea  was  conceived  when  Gibbon  was  twenty- 
seven,  he  was  thirty-one  before  he  set  himself  seriously  at 
work  to  study  his  material.  At  thirty-six  he  began  the 

1  Autobiography,  333. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  109 

composition,  and  he  was  thirty-nine,  when,  in  February,  1776, 
the  first  quarto  volume  was  published.  The  history  had  an 
immediate  success.  "My  book,"  he  wrote,  "was  on  every 
table  and  almost  on  every  toilette;  the  historian  was 
crowned  by  the  taste  or  fashion  of  the  day."  *  The  first 
edition  was  exhausted  in  a  few  days,  a  second  was  printed 
in  1776,  and  next  year  a  third.  The  second  and  third  vol 
umes,  which  ended  the  history  of  the  Western  empire, 
were  published  in  1781,  and  seven  years  later  the  three  vol 
umes  devoted  to  the  Eastern  empire  saw  the  light.  The 
last  sentence  of  the  work,  written  in  the  summer-house  at 
Lausanne,  is,  "It  was  among  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol  that 
I  first  conceived  the  idea  of  a  work  which  has  amused  and 
exercised  near  twenty  years  of  my  life,  and  which,  however 
inadequate  to  my  own  wishes,  I  finally  deliver  to  the  curi 
osity  and  candor  of  the  public." 

This  is  a  brief  account  of  one  of  the  greatest  historical 
works,  if  indeed  it  is  not  the  greatest,  ever  written.  Let  us 
imagine  an  assemblage  of  English,  German,  and  American 
historical  scholars  called  upon  to  answer  the  question, 
Who  is  the  greatest  modern  historian?  No  doubt  can  exist 
that  Gibbon  would  have  a  large  majority  of  the  voices;  and 
I  think  a  like  meeting  of  French  and  Italian  scholars  would 
indorse  the  verdict.  "Gibbon's  work  will  never  be  ex 
celled,"  declared  Niebuhr.2  "That  great  master  of  us  all," 
said  Freeman,  "whose  immortal  tale  none  of  us  can  hope  to 
displace."  3  Bury,  the  latest  editor  of  Gibbon,  who  has 
acutely  criticised  and  carefully  weighed  "The  Decline  and 
Fall,"  concludes  "that  Gibbon  is  behind  date  in  many  de 
tails.  But  in  the  main  things  he  is  still  our  master,  above 
and  beyond  date."  4  His  work  wins  plaudits  from  those 

1  Autobiography,  311.  2  Lectures,  763. 

3  Chief  Periods  European  Hist.,  75,  4  Introduction,  Ixvii. 


110  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

who  believe  that  history  in  its  highest  form  should  be  litera 
ture  and  from  those  who  hold  that  it  should  be  nothing 
more  than  a  scientific  narrative.  The  disciples  of  Macaulay 
and  Carlyle,  of  Stubbs  and  Gardiner,  would  be  found  voting 
in  unison  in  my  imaginary  Congress.  Gibbon,  writes  Bury, 
is  "the  historian  and  the  man  of  letters/'  thus  ranking  with 
Thucydides  and  Tacitus.  These  three  are  put  in  the  highest 
class,  exemplifying  that  "  brilliance  of  style  and  accuracy 
of  statement  are  perfectly  compatible  in  an  historian. "  1 
Accepting  this  authoritative  classification  it  is  well  worth 
while  to  point  out  the  salient  differences  between  the  ancient 
historians  and  the  modern.  From  Thucydides  we  have 
twenty-four  years  of  contemporary  history  of  his  own  coun 
try.  If  the  whole  of  the  Annals  and  History  of  Tacitus 
had  come  down  to  us,  we  should  have  had  eighty-three 
years ;  as  it  is,  we  actually  have  forty-one  of  nearly  contem 
porary  history  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Gibbon's  tale  covers 
1240  years.  He  went  far  beyond  his  own  country  for  his 
subject,  and  the  date  of  his  termination  is  three  centuries 
before  he  was  born.  Milman  spoke  of  "the  amplitude,  the 
magnificence,  and  the  harmony  of  Gibbon's  design,"  2  and 
Bury  writes,  "If  we  take  into  account  the  vast  range  of  his 
work,  his  accuracy  is  amazing."  3  Men  have  wondered  and 
will  long  wonder  at  the  brain  with  such  a  grasp  and  with 
the  power  to  execute  skillfully  so  mighty  a  conception.  "The 
public  is  seldom  wrong"  in  their  judgment  of  a  book,  wrote 
Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography,4  and,  if  that  be  true  at  the 
time  of  actual  publication  to  which  Gibbon  intended  to 
apply  the  remark,  how  much  truer  it  is  in  the  long  run  of 
years.  "The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire"  has 
had  a  life  of  over  one  hundred  and  thirty  years,  and  there  is 
no  indication  that  it  will  not  endure  as  long  as  any  interest 
1  Introduction,  xxxi.  2  Preface,  ix.  3  Introduction,  xli.  4  p.  324. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  111 

is  taken  in  the  study  of  history.  "I  have  never  presumed 
to  accept  a  place  in  the  triumvirate  of  British  historians," 
said  Gibbon,  referring  to  Hume  and  Robertson.  But  in  our 
day  Hume  and  Robertson  gather  dust  on  the  shelf,  while 
Gibbon  is  continually  studied  by  students  and  read  by  seri 
ous  men. 

A  work  covering  Gibbon's  vast  range  of  time  would  have 
been  impossible  for  Thucydides  or  Tacitus.  Historical  skep 
ticism  had  not  been  fully  enough  developed.  There  had 
not  been  a  sufficient  sifting  and  criticism  of  historical  mate 
rials  for  a  master's  work  of  synthesis.  And  it  is  probable 
that  Thucydides  lacked  a  model.  Tacitus  could  indeed  have 
drawn  inspiration  from  the  Greek,  while  Gibbon  had  lessons 
from  both,  showing  a  profound  study  of  Tacitus  and  a 
thorough  acquaintance  with  Thucydides. 

If  circumstances  then  made  it  impossible  for  the  Greek 
or  the  Roman  to  attempt  history  on  the  grand  scale  of  Gib 
bon,  could  Gibbon  have  written  contemporary  history  with 
accuracy  and  impartiality  equal  to  his  great  predecessors? 
This  is  one  of  those  delightful  questions  that  may  be  ever 
discussed  and  never  resolved.  When  twenty-three  years 
old,  arguing  against  the  desire  of  his  father  that  he  should 
go  into  Parliament,  Gibbon  assigned,  as  one  of  the  reasons, 
that  he  lacked  "necessary  prejudices  of  party  and  of  na 
tion"  ; 1  and  when  in  middle  life  he  embraced  the  fortunate 
opportunity  of  becoming  a  member  of  the  House  of  Com 
mons,  he  thus  summed  up  his  experience,  "The  eight  sessions 
that  I  sat  in  Parliament  were  a  school  of  civil  prudence,  the 
first  and  most  essential  virtue  of  an  historian."  2  At  the 
end  of  this  political  career,  Gibbon,  in  a  private  letter  to 
an  intimate  Swiss  friend,  gave  the  reason  why  he  had  em 
braced  it.  "I  entered  Parliament,"  he  said,  "without 
1  Letters,  I,  23.  2  Autobiography,  310. 


112  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

patriotism,  and  without  ambition,  and  I  had  no  other  aim 
than  to  secure  the  comfortable  and  honest  place  of  a  Lord  of 
Trade.  I  obtained  this  place  at  last.  I  held  it  for  three 
years,  from  1779  to  1782,  and  the  net  annual  product  of  it, 
being  £750  sterling,  increased  my  revenue  to  the  level  of 
my  wants  and  desires."  His  retirement  from  Parliament 
was  followed  by  ten  years'  residence  at  Lausanne,  in  the  first 
four  of  which  he  completed  his  history.  A  year  and  a  half 
after  his  removal  to  Lausanne,  he  referred,  in  a  letter  to  his 
closest  friend,  Lord  Sheffield,  to  the  "  abyss  of  your  cursed 
politics,"  and  added:  "I  never  was  a  very  warm  patriot 
and  I  grow  every  day  a  citizen  of  the  world.  The  scramble 
for  power  and  profit  at  Westminster  or  St.  James's,  and  the 
names  of  Pitt  and  Fox  become  less  interesting  to  me  than 
those  of  Caesar  and  Pompey."  2 

These  expressions  would  seem  to  indicate  that  Gibbon 
might  have  written  contemporary  history  well  and  that  the 
candor  displayed  in  "The  Decline  and  Fall"  might  not  have 
been  lacking  had  he  written  of  England  in  his  own  time. 
But  that  subject  he  never  contemplated.  When  twenty- 
four  years  old  he  had  however  considered  a  number  of  Eng 
lish  periods  and  finally  fixed  upon  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  for 
his  hero;  but  a  year  later,  he  wrote  in  his  journal:  "I 
shrink  with  terror  from  the  modern  history  of  England, 
where  every  character  is  a  problem,  and  every  reader  a 
friend  or  an  enemy;  where  a  writer  is  supposed  to  hoist  a 
flag  of  party  and  is  devoted  to  damnation  by  the  adverse 
faction.  ...  I  must  embrace  a  safer  and  more  extensive 
theme."  8 

How  well  Gibbon  knew  himself!  Despite  his  coolness 
and  candor,  war  and  revolution  revealed  his  strong  Tory 
prejudices,  which  he  undoubtedly  feared  might  color  any 
1  Letters,  II,  36.  2  Ibid.,  127.  3  Autobiography,  196. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  113 

history  of  England  that  he  might  undertake.  "I  took  my 
seat/7  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he  wrote,  "at  the  beginning 
of  the  memorable  contest  between  Great  Britain  and  Amer 
ica;  and  supported  with  many  a  sincere  and  silent  vote 
the  rights  though  perhaps  not  the  interests  of  the  mother 
country."1  In  1782  he  recorded  the  conclusion:  "The 
American  war  had  once  been  the  favorite  of  the  country, 
the  pride  of  England  was  irritated  by  the  resistance  of  her 
colonies,  and  the  executive  power  was  driven  by  national 
clamor  into  the  most  vigorous  and  coercive  measures." 
But  it  was  a  fruitless  contest.  Armies  were  lost;  the  debt 
and  taxes  were  increased ;  the  hostile  confederacy  of  France, 
Spain  and  Holland  was  disquieting.  As  a  result  the  war 
became  unpopular  and  Lord  North's  ministry  fell.  Dr. 
Johnson  thought  that  no  nation  not  absolutely  conquered 
had  declined  so  much  in  so  short  a  time.  "We  seem  to  be 
sinking,"  he  said.  "I  am  afraid  of  a  civil  war."  Dr.  Frank 
lin,  according  to  Horace  Walpole,  said  "he  would  furnish 
Mr.  Gibbon  with  materials  for  writing  the  History  of  the 
Decline  of  the  British  Empire."  With  his  country  tottering, 
the  self-centered  but  truthful  Gibbon  could  not  avoid  men 
tion  of  his  personal  loss,  due  to  the  fall  of  his  patron,  Lord 
North.  "I  was  stripped  of  a  convenient  salary,"  he  said, 
"after  having  enjoyed  it  about  three  years."  2 

The  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution  intensified  his 
conservatism.  He  was  then  at  Lausanne,  the  tranquillity 
of  which  was  broken  up  by  the  dissolution  of  the  neighbor 
ing  kingdom.  Many  Lausanne  families  were  terrified  by  the 
menace  of  bankruptcy.  "This  town  and  country,"  Gibbon 
wrote,  "are  crowded  with  noble  exiles,  and  we  sometimes 

1  Autobiography,  310.     "I  am  more  and  more  convinced  that  we  have 
both  the  right  and  power  on  our  side."     Letters,  I,  248. 

2  Hill's  ed.  Gibbon  Autobiography,  212,  213,  314. 

I 


114  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

count  in  an  assembly  a  dozen  princesses  and  duchesses." 
Bitter  disputes  between  them  and  the  triumphant  Demo 
crats  disturbed  the  harmony  of  social  circles.  Gibbon 
espoused  the  cause  of  the  royalists.  "I  beg  leave  to  sub 
scribe  my  assent  to  Mr.  Burke's  creed  on  the  Revolution  of 
France,"  he  wrote.  "I  admire  his  eloquence,  I  approve 
his  politics,  I  adore  his  chivalry,  and  I  can  almost  excuse  his 
reverence  for  Church  establishments." 2  Thirteen  days 
after  the  massacre  of  the  Swiss  guard  in  the  attack  on  the 
Tuileries  in  August,  1792,  Gibbon  wrote  to  Lord  Sheffield, 
"The  last  revolution  of  Paris  appears  to  have  convinced 
almost  everybody  of  the  fatal  consequences  of  Democratical 
principles  which  lead  by  a  path  of  flowers  into  the  abyss  of 
hell."  3  Gibbon,  who  was  astonished  by  so  few  things  in 
history,  wrote  Sainte-Beuve,  was  amazed  by  the  French 
Revolution.4  Nothing  could  be  more  natural.  The  his 
torian  in  his  study  may  consider  the  fall  of  dynasties,  social 
upheavals,  violent  revolutions,  and  the  destruction  of  order 
without  a  tremor.  The  things  have  passed  away.  The 
events  furnish  food  for  his  reflections  and  subjects  for  his 
pen,  while  sanguine  uprisings  at  home  or  in  a  neighboring 
country  in  his  own  time  inspire  him  with  terror  lest  the  oft- 
prophesied  dissolution  of  society  is  at  hand.  It  is  the  dif 
ference  between  the  earthquake  in  your  own  city  and  the 
one  3000  miles  away.  As  Gibbon's  pocket-nerve  was 
sensitive,  it  may  be  he  was  also  thinking  of  the  £1300  he 
had  invested  in  1784  in  the  new  loan  of  the  King  of  France, 
deeming  the  French  funds  as  solid  as  the  English.5 

It  is  well  now  to  repeat  our  dictum  that  Gibbon  is  the 
greatest  modern  historian,  but,  in  reasserting  this,  it  is  no 
more  than  fair  to  cite  the  opinions  of  two  dissentients  — 

1  Letters,  II,  249.  2  Autobiography,  342.  3  Letters,  II,  310. 

4  Causeries  du  Lundi,  viii,  469.  6  Letters,  II,  98. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  115 

the  great  literary  historians  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
Macaulay  and  Carlyle.  "The  truth  is,"  wrote  Macaulay 
in  his  diary,  "that  I  admire  no  historians  much  except  Herod 
otus,  Thucydides,  and  Tacitus.  .  .  .  There  is  merit  no 
doubt  in  Hume,  Robertson,  Voltaire,  and  Gibbon.  Yet  it 
is  not  the  thing.  I  have  a  conception  of  history  more  just, 
I  am  confident,  than  theirs."  1  "Gibbon,"  said  Carlyle  in 
a  public  lecture,  is  "a  greater  historian  than  Robertson 
but  not  so  great  as  Hume.  With  all  his  swagger  and  bom 
bast,  no  man  ever  gave  a  more  futile  account  of  human 
things  than  he  has  done  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire ;  assigning  no  profound  cause  for  these  phenomena, 
nothing  but  diseased  nerves,  and  all  sorts  of  miserable  mo 
tives,  to  the  actors  in  them."  2  Carlyle's  statement  shows 
envious  criticism  as  well  as  a  prejudice  in  favor  of  his  brother 
Scotchman.  It  was  made  in  1838,  since  when  opinion  has 
raised  Gibbon  to  the  top,  for  he  actually  lives  while  Hume 
is  read  perfunctorily,  if  at  all.  Moreover  among  the  three 
—  Gibbon,  Macaulay,  and  Carlyle  —  whose  works  are  litera 
ture  as  well  as  history,  modern  criticism  has  no  hesitation  in 
awarding  the  palm  to  Gibbon. 

Before  finally  deciding  upon  his  subject  Gibbon  thought 
of  "The  History  of  the  Liberty  of  the  Swiss"  and  "The 
History  of  the  Republic  of  Florence  under  the  House  of 
Medicis,"  3  but  in  the  end,  as  we  have  seen,  he  settled  on  the 
later  history  of  the  Roman  Empire,  showing,  as  Lowell 
said  of  Parkman,  his  genius  in  the  choice  of  his  subject.  His 
history  really  begins  with  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius, 
180  A.D.,  but  the  main  narrative  is  preceded  by  three  excel 
lent  introductory  chapters,  covering  in  Bury's  edition  eighty- 
two  pages.  After  the  completion  of  his  work,  he  regretted 

1  Trevelyan,  II,  232.  2  Lectures  on  the  Hist,  of  Literature,  185. 

3  Autobiography,  196. 


116  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

that  he  had  not  begun  it  at  an  earlier  period.  On  the  first 
page  of  his  own  printed  copy  of  his  book  where  he  announces 
his  design,  he  has  entered  this  marginal  note :  "  Should  I  not 
have  given  the  history  of  that  fortunate  period  which  was  in 
terposed  between  two  iron  ages  ?  Should  I  not  have  deduced 
the  decline  of  the  Empire  from  the  Civil  Wars  that  ensued 
after  the  Fall  of  Nero  or  even  from  the  tyranny  which  suc 
ceeded  the  reign  of  Augustus  ?  Alas !  I  should ;  but  of 
what  avail  is  this  tardy  knowledge?"  We  may  echo 
Gibbon's  regret  that  he  had  not  commenced  his  history 
with  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  as,  in  his  necessary  use  of  Tacitus, 
we  should  have  had  the  running  comment  of  one  great  his 
torian  on  another,  of  which  we  have  a  significant  example 
in  Gibbon's  famous  sixteenth  chapter  wherein  he  discusses 
Tacitus's  account  of  the  persecution  of  the  Christians  by 
Nero.  With  his  power  of  historic  divination,  he  would  have 
so  absorbed  Tacitus  and  his  time  that  the  history  would 
almost  have  seemed  a  collaboration  between  two  great  and 
sympathetic  minds.  "Tacitus,"  he  wrote,  "very  frequently 
trusts  to  the  curiosity  or  reflection  of  his  readers  to  supply 
those  intermediate  circumstances  and  ideas,  which,  in  his 
extreme  conciseness,  he  has  thought  proper  to  suppress."  2 
How  Gibbon  would  have  filled  those  gaps !  Though  he 
was  seldom  swayed  by  enthusiasm,  his  admiration  of  the 
Roman  historian  fell  little  short  of  idolatry.  His  refer 
ences  in  "The  Decline  and  Fall"  are  many,  and  some  of 
them  are  here  worth  recalling  to  mind.  "In  their  primitive 
state  of  simplicity  and  independence,"  he  wrote,  "the  Ger 
mans  were  surveyed  by  the  discerning  eye  and  delineated 
by  the  masterly  pencil  of  Tacitus,  the  first  of  historians  who 
applied  the  science  of  philosophy  to  the  study  of  facts."  3 
Again  he  speaks  of  him  as  "the  philosophic  historian  whose 
1  Bury's  ed.,  xxxv.  2  Decline  and  Fall,  Smith's  ed.,  236.  *  Ibid.,  1, 349. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  117 

writings  will  instruct  the  last  generation  of  mankind."  l 
And  in  Chapter  XVI  he  devoted  five  pages  to  citation  from, 
and  comment  on,  Tacitus,  and  paid  him  one  of  the  most 
splendid  tributes  one  historian  ever  paid  another.  "To 
collect,  to  dispose,  and  to  adorn  a  series  of  fourscore  years 
in  an  immortal  work,  every  sentence  of  which  is  pregnant 
with  the  deepest  observations  and  the  most  lively  images, 
was  an  undertaking  sufficient  to  exercise  the  genius  of  Taci 
tus  himself  during  the  greatest  part  of  his  life."  2  So  much 
for  admiration.  That,  nevertheless,  Gibbon  could  wield  the 
critical  pen  at  the  expense  of  the  historian  he  rated  so  highly, 
is  shown  by  a  marginal  note  in  his  own  printed  copy  of  "The 
Decline  and  Fall."  It  will  be  remembered  that  Tacitus 
published  his  History  and  wrote  his  Annals  during  the  reign 
of  Trajan,  whom  he  undoubtedly  respected  and  admired. 
He  referred  to  the  reigns  of  Nerva  and  Trajan  in  suggested 
contrast  to  that  of  Domitian  as  "times  when  men  were 
blessed  with  the  rare  privilege  of  thinking  with  freedom,  and 
uttering  what  they  thought."  3  It  fell  to  both  Tacitus  and 
Gibbon  to  speak  of  the  testament  of  Augustus  which,  after 
his  death,  was  read  in  the  Senate :  and  Tacitus  wrote,  Augus 
tus  "added  a  recommendation  to  keep  the  empire  within 
fixed  limits,"  on  which  he  thus  commented,  "but  whether 
from  apprehension  for  its  safety,  or  jealousy  of  future  rivals, 
is  uncertain."  4  Gibbon  thus  criticised  this  comment :  "Why 
must  rational  advice  be  imputed  to  a  base  or  foolish  motive  ? 
To  what  cause,  error,  malevolence,  or  flattery,  shall  I  ascribe 
the  unworthy  alternative?  Was  the  historian  dazzled  by 
Trajan's  conquests?"5 

The  intellectual  training  of  the  greatest  modern  historian 
is  a  matter  of  great  interest.     "From  my  early  youth," 

1  Decline  and  Fall,  Smith's  ed.,  II,  35.        2 II,  235.        8  History,  I,  1. 
*  Annals,  1, 11.          6  Bury's  introduction, 


118  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

wrote  Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography,  "I  aspired  to  the  char 
acter  of  an  historian. "  1  He  had  "an  early  and  invincible 
love  of  reading"  which  he  said  he  "would  not  exchange  for 
the  treasures  of  India"  and  which  led  him  to  a  "vague  and 
multifarious"  perusal  of  books.  Before  he  reached  the  age 
of  fifteen  he  was  matriculated  at  Magdalen  College,  giving 
this  account  of  his  preparation.  "I  arrived  at  Oxford," 
he  said,  "with  a  stock  of  erudition  that  might  have  puzzled 
a  Doctor  and  a  degree  of  ignorance  of  which  a  schoolboy  would 
have  been  ashamed."  2  He  did  not  adapt  himself  to  the 
life  or  the  method  of  Oxford,  and  from  them  apparently 
derived  no  benefit.  "I  spent  fourteen  months  at  Magdalen 
College,"  he  wrote;  "they  proved  the  fourteen  months  the 
most  idle  and  unprofitable  of  my  whole  life."  3  He  became 
a  Roman  Catholic.  It  was  quite  characteristic  of  this 
bookish  man  that  his  conversion  was  effected,  not  by  the 
emotional  influence  of  some  proselytizer,  but  by  the  read 
ing  of  books.  English  translations  of  two  famous  works  of 
Bossuet  fell  into  his  hands.  "I  read,"  he  said,  "I  applauded, 
I  believed  .  .  .  and  I  surely  fell  by  a  noble  hand."  Before 
a  priest  in  London,  on  June  8,  1753,  he  privately  "abjured 
the  errors  of  heresy"  and  was  admitted  into  the  "pale  of 
the  church."  But  at  that  time  this  was  a  serious  business 
for  both  priest  and  proselyte.  For  the  rule  laid  down  by 
Blackstone  was  this,  "Where  a  person  is  reconciled  to  the 
see  of  Rome,  or  procures  others  to  be  reconciled,  the  offence 
amounts  to  High-Treason."  This  severe  rule  was  not  en 
forced,  but  there  were  milder  laws  under  which  a  priest 
might  suffer  perpetual  imprisonment  and  the  proselyte's 
estate  be  transferred  to  his  nearest  relations.  Under  such 
laws  prosecutions  were  had  and  convictions  obtained. 
Little  wonder  was  it  when  Gibbon  apprised  his  father  in 
1  Autobiography,  193.  2  Ibid.,  48,  59.  3  Ibid.,  67. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  119 

an  " elaborate  controversial  epistle"  of  the  serious  step 
which  he  had  taken,  that  the  elder  Gibbon  should  be  as 
tonished  and  indignant.  In  his  passion  he  divulged  the 
secret  which  effectually  closed  the  gates  of  Magdalen  Col 
lege  to  his  son/  who  was  packed  off  to  Lausanne  and  "  settled 
under  the  roof  and  tuition"  of  a  Calvinist  minister.2  Ed 
ward  Gibbon  passed  nearly  five  years  at  Lausanne,  from  the 
age  of  sixteen  to  that  of  twenty-one,  and  they  were  fruitful 
years  for  his  education.  It  was  almost  entirely  an  affair 
of  self-training,  as  his  tutor  soon  perceived  that  the  student 
had  gone  beyond  the  teacher  and  allowed  him  to  pursue  his 
own  special  bent.  After  his  history  was  published  and  his 
fame  won,  he  recorded  this  opinion:  "In  the  life  of  every 
man  of  letters  there  is  an  sera,  from  a  level,  from  whence 
he  soars  with  his  own  wings  to  his  proper  height,  and  the 
most  important  part  of  his  education  is  that  which  he  be 
stows  on  himself."  3  This  was  certainly  true  in  Gibbon's 
case.  On  his  arrival  at  Lausanne  he  hardly  knew  any 
French,  but  before  he  returned  to  England  he  thought  spon 
taneously  in  French  and  understood,  spoke,  and  wrote  it 
better  than  he  did  his  mother  tongue.4  He  read  Montes 
quieu  frequently  and  was  struck  with  his  "energy  of  style 
and  boldness  of  hypothesis."  Among  the  books  which 
"may  have  remotely  contributed  to  form  the  historian  of  the 
Roman  Empire"  were  the  Provincial  Letters  of  Pascal, 
which  he  read  "with  a  new  pleasure"  almost  every  year. 
From  them  he  said,  "I  learned  to  manage  the  weapon  of 
grave  and  temperate  irony,  even  on  subjects  of  ecclesiastical 
solemnity."  As  one  thinks  of  his  chapters  in  "The  Decline 
and  Fall"  on  Julian,  one  is  interested  to  know  that  during 
this  period  he  was  introduced  to  the  life  and  times  of  this 

Autobiography,  86  et  seq.;  Hill's  ed.,  69,  291.      'Autobiography,  131. 
3  Ibid.,  137.  4  Ibid.,  134. 


120  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Roman  emperor  by  a  book  written  by  a  French  abbe*.  He 
read  Locke,  Grotius,  and  Puffendorf,  but  unquestionably  his 
greatest  knowledge,  mental  discipline,  and  peculiar  mastery 
of  his  own  tongue  came  from  his  diligent  and  systematic 
study  of  the  Latin  classics.  He  read  nearly  all  of  the  his 
torians,  poets,  orators,  and  philosophers,  going  over  for  a  sec 
ond  or  even  a  third  time  Terence,  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Taci 
tus.  He  mastered  Cicero's  Orations  and  Letters  so  that 
they  became  ingrained  in  his  mental  fiber,  and  he  termed 
these  and  his  other  works,  "a  library  of  eloquence  and 
reason."  "As  I  read  Cicero,"  he  wrote,  "I  applauded  the 
observation  of  Quintilian,  that  every  student  may  judge 
of  his  own  proficiency  by  the  satisfaction  which  he  receives 
from  the  Roman  orator."  And  again,  " Cicero's  epistles 
may  in  particular  afford  the  models  of  every  form  of  cor 
respondence  from  the  careless  effusions  of  tenderness  arid 
friendship  to  the  well-guarded  declaration  of  discreet  and 
dignified  resentment."  *  Gibbon  never  mastered  Greek  as 
he  did  Latin;  and  Dr.  Smith,  one  of  his  editors,  points 
out  where  he  has  fallen  into  three  errors  from  the  use  of 
the  French  or  Latin  translation  of  Procopius  instead  of 
consulting  the  original.2  Indeed  he  himself  has  disclosed 
one  defect  of  self-training.  Referring  to  his  youthful  resi 
dence  at  Lausanne,  he  wrote:  "I  worked  my  way  through 
about  half  the  Iliad,  and  afterwards  interpreted  alone  a 
large  portion  of  Xenophon  and  Herodotus.  But  my  ardor, 
destitute  of  aid  and  emulation,  was  gradually  cooled  and, 
from  the  barren  task  of  searching  words  in  a  lexicon,  I  with 
drew  to  the  free  and  familiar  conversation  of  Virgil  and 
Tacitus."  3 

All  things  considered,  however,  it  was  an  excellent  training 
for  a  historian  of  the  Roman  Empire.     But  all  except  the 
1  Autobiography,  139-142.        2  V,  108, 130,  231.        3  Autobiography,  141. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  121 

living  knowledge  of  French  he  might  have  had  in  his  "ele 
gant  apartment  in  Magdalen  College"  just  as  well  as  in  his 
" ill-contrived  and  ill-furnished  small  chamber "  in  "an  old 
inconvenient  house/'  situated  in  a  "narrow  gloomy  street, 
the  most  unfrequented  of  an  unhandsome  town"; 1  and  in 
Oxford  he  would  have  had  the  "aid  and  emulation"  of 
which  at  Lausanne  he  sadly  felt  the  lack. 

The  Calvinist  minister,  his  tutor,  was  a  more  useful  guide 
for  Gibbon  in  the  matter  of  religion  than  in  his  intellectual 
training.  Through  his  efforts  and  Gibbon's  "private  re 
flections,"  Christmas  Day,  1754,  one  year  and  a  half  after 
his  arrival  at  Lausanne,  was  witness  to  his  reconversion,  as 
he  then  received  the  sacrament  in  the  Calvinistic  Church. 
"The  articles  of  the  Romish  creed,"  he  said,  had  "disap 
peared  like  a  dream";  and  he  wrote  home  to  his  aunt, 
"I  am  now  a  good  Protestant  and  am  extremely  glad  of  it."  2 

An  intellectual  and  social  experience  of  value  was  his 
meeting  with  Voltaire,  who  had  set  up  a  theater  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Lausanne  for  the  performance  mainly  of 
his  own  plays.  Gibbon  seldom  failed  to  procure  a  ticket  to 
these  representations.  Voltaire  played  the  parts  suited  to 
his  years;  his  declamation,  Gibbon  thought,  was  old- 
fashioned,  and  "he  expressed  the  enthusiasm  of  poetry 
rather  than  the  feelings  of  nature."  "The  parts  of  the  young 
and  fair,"  he  said,  "were  distorted  by  Voltaire's  fat  and 
ugly  niece."  Despite  this  criticism,  these  performances 
fostered  a  taste  for  the  French  theater,  to  the  abatement  of 
his  idolatry  for  Shakespeare,  which  seemed  to  him  to  be 
"inculcated  from  our  infancy  as  the  first  duty  of  an  Eng 
lishman."  3  Personally,  Voltaire  and  Gibbon  did  not  get  on 
well  together.  Dr.  Hill  suggests  that  Voltaire  may  have 
slighted  the  "English  youth,"  and  if  this  is  correct,  Gibbon 
'Autobiography,  132.  3  Hill's  ed.,  89,  293.  "Autobiography,  149. 


122  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

was  somewhat  spiteful  to  carry  the  feeling  more  than  thirty 
years.  Besides  the  criticism  of  the  acting,  he  called  Voltaire 
"the  envious  bard"  because  it  was  only  with  much  reluc 
tance  and  ill-humor  that  he  permitted  the  performance  of 
Iphigenie  of  Racine.  Nevertheless,  Gibbon  is  impressed 
with  the  social  influence  of  the  great  Frenchman.  "The 
wit  and  philosophy  of  Voltaire,  his  table  and  theatre,"  he 
wrote,  "refined  in  a  visible  degree  the  manners  of  Lausanne, 
and  however  addicted  to  study,  I  enjoyed  my  share  of  the 
amusements  of  society.  After  the  theatrical  representa 
tions,  I  sometimes  supped  with  the  actors :  I  was  now  famil 
iar  in  some,  and  acquainted  in  many,  houses ;  and  my  even 
ings  were  generally  devoted  to  cards  and  conversation, 
either  in  private  parties  or  numerous  assemblies."  l 

Gibbon  was  twenty-one  when  he  returned  to  England. 
Dividing  his  time  between  London  and  the  country,  he 
continued  his  self-culture.  He  read  English,  French,  and 
Latin,  and  took  up  the  study  of  Greek.  "Every  day,  every 
hour,"  he  wrote,  "was  agreeably  filled";  and  "I  was  never 
less  alone  than  when  by  myself."  2  He  read  repeatedly 
Robertson  and  Hume,  and  has  in  the  words  of  Sainte-Beuve 
left  a  testimony  so  spirited  and  so  delicately  expressed  as 
could  have  come  only  from  a  man  of  taste  who  appreciated 
Xenophon.3  "The  perfect  composition,  the  nervous  lan 
guage,"  wrote  Gibbon,  "the  well-turned  periods  of  Dr. 
Robertson  inflamed  me  to  the  ambitious  hope  that  I  might 
one  day  tread  in  his  footsteps;  the  calm  philosophy,  the 
careless  inimitable  beauties  of  his  friend  and  rival,  often 
forced  me  to  close  the  volume  with  a  mixed  sensation  of 
delight  and  despair."  4  He  made  little  progress  in  London 
society  and  his  solitary  evenings  were  passed  with  his  books, 

1  Autobiography,  149.  2  Ibid.,  161. 

8  Causeries  du  Lundi,  VIII,  445.  4  Autobiography,  167. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  123 

but  he  consoled  himself  by  thinking  that  he  lost  nothing  by 
a  withdrawal  from  a  "  noisy  and  expensive  scene  of  crowds 
without  company,  and  dissipation  without  pleasure."  At 
twenty-four  he  published  his  "  Essay  on  the  Study  of  Litera 
ture,"  begun  at  Lausanne  and  written  entirely  in  French. 
This  possesses  no  interest  for  the  historical  student  except  to 
know  the  bare  fact  of  the  writing  and  publication  as  a  step 
in  the  intellectual  development  of  the  historian.  Sainte- 
Beuve  in  his  two  essays  on  Gibbon  devoted  three  pages  to 
an  abstract  and  criticism  of  it,  perhaps  because  it  had  a 
greater  success  in  France  than  in  England;  and  his  opin 
ion  of  Gibbon's  language  is  interesting.  "The  French," 
Sainte-Beuve  wrote,  "is  that  of  one  who  has  read  Mon 
tesquieu  much  and  imitates  him ;  it  is  correct,  but  artificial 
French."1 

Then  followed  two  and  a  half  years'  service  in  the  Hamp 
shire  militia.  But  he  did  not  neglect  his  reading.  He 
mastered  Homer,  whom  he  termed  "the  Bible  of  the  an 
cients,"  and  in  the  militia  he  acquired  "a  just  and  indelible 
knowledge"  of  what  he  called  "the  first  of  languages." 
And  his  love  for  Latin  abided  also:  "On  every  march,  in 
every  journey,  Horace  was  always  in  my  pocket  and  often 
in  my  hand."  2  Practical  knowledge  he  absorbed  almost 
insensibly.  "The  daily  occupations  of  the  militia,"  he  wrote, 
"introduced  me  to  the  science  of  Tactics"  and  led  to  the 
study  of  "the  precepts  of  Polybius  and  Caesar."  In  this 
connection  occurs  the  remark  which  admirers  of  Gibbon 
will  never  tire  of  citing:  "A  familiar  view  of  the  discipline 
and  evolutions  of  a  modern  battalion  gave  me  a  clearer 
notion  of  the  Phalanx  and  the  Legion ;  and  the  Captain  of 
the  Hampshire  Grenadiers  (the  reader  may  smile)  has  not 
been  useless  to  the  historian  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
1  Causeries  du  Lundi,  VIII,  446.  2  Autobiography,  Hill's  ed.,  142. 


124  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Roman  Empire."  l  The  grand  tour  followed  his  militia 
service.  Three  and  a  half  months  in  Paris,  and  a  revisit  to 
Lausanne  preceded  the  year  that  he  passed  in  Italy.  Of 
the  conception  of  the  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall,  dur 
ing  his  stay  in  Rome,  I  have  already  spoken. 

On  his  return  to  England,  contemplating  "the  decline 
and  fall  of  Rome  at  an  awful  distance,"  he  began,  in  col 
laboration  with  the  Swiss  Deyverdun,  his  bosom  friend,  a 
history  of  Switzerland  written  in  French.  During  the  win 
ter  of  1767,  the  first  book  of  it  was  submitted  to  a  literary 
society  of  foreigners  in  London.  As  the  author  was  un 
known  the  strictures  were  free  and  the  verdict  unfavorable. 
Gibbon  was  present  at  the  meeting  and  related  that  "the 
momentary  sensation  was  painful,"  but,  on  cooler  reflection, 
he  agreed  with  his  judges  and  intended  to  consign  his  manu 
script  to  the  flames.  But  this,  as  Lord  Sheffield,  his  literary 
executor  and  first  editor,  shows  conclusively,  he  neglected 
to  do.2  This  essay  of  Gibbon's  possesses  interest  for  us, 
inasmuch  as  David  Hume  read  it,  and  wrote  to  Gibbon  a 
friendly  letter,  in  which  he  said:  "I  have  perused  your 
manuscript  with  great  pleasure  and  satisfaction.  I  have 
only  one  objection,  derived  from  the  language  in  which  it 
is  written.  Why  do  you  compose  in  French,  and  carry 
faggots  into  the  wood,  as  Horace  says  with  regard  to  Ro 
mans  who  wrote  in  Greek?"  3  This  critical  query  of  Hume 
must  have  profoundly  influenced  Gibbon.  Next  year  he 
began  to  work  seriously  on  "The  Decline  and  Fall"  and 
five  years  later  began  the  composition  of  it  in  English.  It 
does  not  appear  that  he  had  any  idea  of  writing  his  magnum 
opus  in  French. 

In  this  rambling  discourse,  in  which  I  have  purposely 
avoided  relating  the  life  of  Gibbon  in  anything  like  a 

1  Autobiography,  258.  a  Ibid.,  277.  3  Ibid. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  125 

chronological  order,  we  return  again  and  again  to  the  great 
History.  And  it  could  not  well  be  otherwise.  For  if 
Edward  Gibbon  could  not  have  proudly  said,  I  am  the  au 
thor  of  "six  volumes  in  quartos"  1  he  would  have  had  no 
interest  for  us.  Dr.  Hill  writes,  "For  one  reader  who  has 
read  his  '  Decline  and  Fall/  there  are  at  least  a  score  who 
have  read  his  Autobiography,  and  who  know  him,  not  as 
the  great  historian,  but  as  a  man  of  a  most  original  and 
interesting  nature." 2  But  these  twenty  people  would 
never  have  looked  into  the  Autobiography  had  it  not  been 
the  life  of  a  great  historian;  indeed  the  Autobiography 
would  never  have  been  written  except  to  give  an  account 
of  a  great  life  work.  "The  Decline  and  Fall,"  therefore,  is 
the  thing  about  which  all  the  other  incidents  of  his  life 
revolve.  The  longer  this  history  is  read  and  studied,  the 
greater  is  the  appreciation  of  it.  Dean  Milman  followed 
Gibbon's  track  through  many  portions  of  his  work,  and 
read  his  authorities,  ending  with  a  deliberate  judgment  in 
favor  of  his  "general  accuracy."  "Many  of  his  seeming 
errors,"  he  wrote,  "are  almost  inevitable  from  the  close 
condensation  of  his  matter."  3  Guizot  had  three  different 
opinions  based  on  three  various  readings.  After  the  first 
rapid  perusal,  the  dominant  feeling  was  one  of  interest  in  a 
narrative,  always  animated  in  spite  of  its  extent,  always 
clear  and  limpid  in  spite  of  the  variety  of  objects.  During 
the  second  reading,  when  he  examined  particularly  certain 
points,  he  was  somewhat  disappointed ;  he  encountered 
some  errors  either  in  the  citations  or  in  the  facts  and  es 
pecially  shades  and  strokes  of  partiality  which  led  him  to  a 
comparatively  rigorous  judgment.  In  the  ensuing  com 
plete  third  reading,  the  first  impression,  doubtless  corrected 
by  the  second,  but  not  destroyed,  survived  and  was  main- 
1  Letters,  II,  279.  2  Preface,  x.  3  Smith's  ed.,  I,  xi. 


126  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

tained ;  and  with  some  restrictions  and  reservations,  Guizot 
declared  that,  concerning  that  vast  and  able  work,  there 
remained  with  him  an  appreciation  of  the  immensity  of 
research,  the  variety  of  knowledge,  the  sagacious  breadth 
and  especially  that  truly  philosophical  rectitude  of  a  mind 
which  judges  the  past  as  it  would  judge  the  present.1 
Mommsen  said  in  1894:  "Amid  all  the  changes  that  have 
come  over  the  study  of  the  history  of  the  Roman  Empire,  in 
spite  of  all  the  rush  of  the  new  evidence  that  has  poured  in 
upon  us  and  almost  overwhelmed  us,  in  spite  of  changes 
which  must  be  made,  in  spite  of  alterations  of  view,  or 
alterations  even  in  the  aspect  of  great  characters,  no  one 
would  in  the  future  be  able  to  read  the  history  of  the  Roman 
Empire  unless  he  read,  possibly  with  a  fuller  knowledge, 
but  with  the  broad  views,  the  clear  insight,  the  strong  grasp 
of  Edward  Gibbon.7' 2 

It  is  difficult  for  an  admirer  of  Gibbon  to  refrain  from 
quoting  some  of  his  favorite  passages.  The  opinion  of  a 
great  historian  on  history  always  possesses  interest.  History, 
wrote  Gibbon,  is  "little  more  than  the  register  of  the  crimes, 
follies,  and  misfortunes  of  mankind."  Again,  "Wars  and 
the  administration  of  public  affairs  are  the  principal  sub 
jects  of  history."  And  the  following  cannot  fail  to  recall  a 
similar  thought  in  Tacitus,  "History  undertakes  to  record 
the  transactions  of  the  past  for  the  instruction  of  future 
ages."  3  Two  references  to  religion  under  the  Pagan  em 
pire  are  always  worth  repeating.  "The  various  modes  of 
worship  which  prevailed  in  the  Roman  world,"  he  wrote, 
"were  all  considered  by  the  people  as  equally  true;  by 
the  philosopher  as  equally  false;  and  by  the  magistrate  as 
equally  useful."  "The  fashion  of  incredulity  was  com- 

1  Causeries  du  Lundi,  VIII,  453.        2  London  Times,  November  16,  1894. 
'Smith's  ed.,  I,  215,  371;  II,  230. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  127 

municated  from  the  philosopher  to  the  man  of  pleasure  or 
business,  from  the  noble  to  the  plebeian,  and  from  the  master 
to  the  menial  slave  who  waited  at  his  table  and  who  equally 
listened  to  the  freedom  of  his  conversation.'7 1  Gibbon's 
idea  of  the  happiest  period  of  mankind  is  interesting  and 
characteristic.  "If,"  he  wrote,  "a  man  were  called  to  fix 
the  period  in  the  history  of  the  world  during  which  the  con 
dition  of  the  human  race  was  most  happy  and  prosperous, 
he  would,  without  hesitation,  name  that  which  elapsed  from 
the  death  of  Domitian  to  the  accession  of  Commodus."  2 
This  period  was  from  A.D.  96  to  180,  covering  the  reigns  of 
Nerva,  Trajan,  Hadrian,  Antoninus  Pius,  and  Marcus  Aure- 
lius.  Professor  Carter,  in  a  lecture  in  Rome  in  1907,  drew, 
by  a  modern  comparison,  a  characterization  of  the  first 
three  named.  When  we  were  studying  in  Germany,  he 
said,  we  were  accustomed  to  sum  up  the  three  emperors, 
William  I,  Frederick  III,  and  William  II,  as  der  greise 
Kaiser,  der  weise  Kaiser,  und  der  reise  Kaiser.  The  char 
acterizations  will  fit  well  Nerva,  Trajan,  and  Hadrian. 
Gibbon  speaks  of  the  "restless  activity"  of  Hadrian,  whose 
life  "was  almost  a  perpetual  journey,"  and  who  during  his 
reign  visited  every  province  of  his  empire.3 

A  casual  remark  of  Gibbon's,  "Corruption  [is]  the  most 
infallible  symptom  of  constitutional  liberty,"  4  shows  the 
sentiment  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  generality  of 
the  history  becomes  specific  in  a  letter  to  his  father,  who 
has  given  him  hopes  of  a  seat  in  Parliament.  "This  seat," 
so  Edward  Gibbon  wrote,  "according  to  the  custom  of  our 
venal  country  was  to  be  bought,  and  fifteen  hundred  pounds 
were  mentioned  as  the  price  of  purchase."  5 

Gibbon  anticipated  Captain  Mahan.     In  speaking  of  a 

1  Smith's  ed.,  I,  165;  II,  205.          2  Ibid.,  I,  216.         *Ibid.,  I,  144. 
4  Ibid.,  Ill,  78.  5  Letters,  I,  23. 


128  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

naval  battle  between  the  fleet  of  Justinian  and  that  of  the 
Goths  in  which  the  galleys  of  the  Eastern  empire  gained  a 
signal  victory,  he  wrote,  "The  Goths  affected  to  depreciate 
an  element  in  which  they  were  unskilled;  but  their  own 
experience  confirmed  the  truth  of  a  maxim,  that  the  master 
of  the  sea  will  always  acquire  the  dominion  of  the  land."  l 
But  Gibbon's  anticipation  was  one  of  the  frequent  cases 
where  the  same  idea  has  occurred  to  a  number  of  men  of 
genius,  as  doubtless  Captain  Mahan  was  not  aware  of  this 
sentence  any  more  than  he  was  of  Bacon's  and  Raleigh's  epit 
omes  of  the  theme  which  he  has  so  originally  and  brilliantly 
treated.2 

No  modern  historian  has  been  the  subject  of  so  much 
critical  comment  as  Gibbon.  I  do  not  know  how  it  will 
compare  in  volume  with  either  of  the  similar  examinations 
of  Thucydides  and  Tacitus;  but  the  criticism  is  of  a  dif 
ferent  sort.  The  only  guarantee  of  the  honesty  of  Tacitus, 
wrote  Sainte-Beuve,  is  Tacitus  himself ; 3  and  a  like  remark 
will  apply  to  Thucydides.  But  a  fierce  light  beats  on  Gib 
bon.  His  voluminous  notes  furnish  the  critics  the  mate 
rials  on  which  he  built  his  history,  which,  in  the  case  of 
the  ancient  historians,  must  be  largely  a  matter  of  conjec 
ture.  With  all  the  searching  examination  of  "The  Decline 
and  Fall,"  it  is  surprising  how  few  errors  have  been  found 
and,  of  the  errors  which  have  been  noted,  how  few  are  really 
important.  Guizot,  Milman,  Dr.  Smith,  Cotter  Morison, 
Bury,  and  a  number  of  lesser  lights  have  raked  his  text  and 
his  notes  with  few  momentous  results.  We  have,  writes 
Bury,  improved  methods  over  Gibbon  and  "much  new  ma 
terial  of  various  kinds,"  but  "Gibbon's  historical  sense 
kept  him  constantly  right  in  dealing  with  his  sources"; 

1  Smith's  ed.,  V,  230.  2  See  Mahan's  From  Sail  to  Steam,  276. 

3  Causeries  du  Lundi,  1, 153. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  129 

and  "in  the  main  things  he  is  still  our  master."  1  The  man 
is  generally  reflected  in  his  book.  That  Gibbon  has  been 
weighed  and  not  found  wanting  is  because  he  was  as  honest 
and  truthful  as  any  man  who  ever  wrote  history.  The 
autobiographies  and  letters  exhibit  to  us  a  transparent 
man,  which  indeed  some  of  the  personal  allusions  in  the 
history  might  have  foreshadowed.  "I  have  often  fluctuated 
and  shall  tamely  follow  the  Colbert  Ms./'  he  wrote,  where 
the  authenticity  of  a  book  was  in  question.2  In  another 
case  "the  scarcity  of  facts  and  the  uncertainty  of  dates" 
opposed  his  attempt  to  describe  the  first  invasion  of  Italy 
by  Alaric.3  In  the  beginning  of  the  famous  Chapter 
XLIV  which  is  "admired  by  jurists  as  a  brief  and  brilliant 
exposition  of  the  principles  of  Roman  law/7  4  Gibbon  wrote, 
"Attached  to  no  party,  interested  only  for  the  truth  and 
candor  of  history,  and  directed  by  the  most  temperate 
and  skillful  guides,  I  enter  with  just  diffidence  on  the  sub 
ject  of  civil  law."  5  In  speaking  of  the  state  of  Britain 
between  409  and  449,  he  said,  "I  owe  it  to  myself  and  to 
historic  truth  to  declare  that  some  circumstances  in  this 
paragraph  are  founded  only  on  conjecture  and  analogy." 
Throughout  his  whole  work  the  scarcity  of  materials  forces 
Gibbon  to  the  frequent  use  of  conjecture,  but  I  believe  that 
for  the  most  part  his  conjectures  seem  reasonable  to  the 
critics.  Impressed  with  the  correctness  of  his  account  of 
the  Eastern  empire  a  student  of  the  subject  once  told  me 
that  Gibbon  certainly  possessed  the  power  of  wise  divina 
tion. 

Gibbon's  striving  after  precision  and  accuracy  is  shown  in 
some  marginal  corrections  he  made  in  his  own  printed  copy 
of  "The  Decline  and  Fall."  On  the  first  page  in  his  first 

1  Introduction,  xlv,  1,  Ixvii.         2  Smith's  ed.,  Ill,  14.       3  Ibid.,  IV,  31. 
4  Bury,  lii.  6  Smith's  ed.,  V,  258.        •  Ibid.t  IV,  132  n. 

K 


130  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

printed  edition  and  as  it  now  stands,  he  said,  "To  deduce 
the  most  important  circumstances  of  its  decline  and  fall: 
a  revolution  which  will  ever  be  remembered  and  is  still 
felt  by  the  nations  of  the  earth."  For  this  the  following 
is  substituted:  "To  prosecute  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
empire  of  Rome :  of  whose  language,  religion,  and  laws  the 
impression  will  be  long  preserved  in  our  own  and  the  neigh 
boring  countries  of  Europe."  He  thus  explains  the  change : 
"Mr.  Hume  told  me  that,  in  correcting  his  history,  he 
always  labored  to  reduce  superlatives  and  soften  positives. 
Have  Asia  and  Africa,  from  Japan  to  Morocco,  any  feeling 
or  memory  of  the  Roman  Empire?" 

On  page  6,  Bury's  edition,  the  text  is,  "The  praises  of 
Alexander,  transmitted  by  a  succession  of  poets  and  his 
torians,  had  kindled  a  dangerous  emulation  in  the  mind  of 
Trajan."  We  can  imagine  that  Gibbon  reflected,  What 
evidence  have  I  that  Trajan  had  read  these  poets  and  his 
torians?  Therefore  he  made  this  change:  "Late  genera 
tions  and  far  distant  climates  may  impute  their  calamities 
to  the  immortal  author  of  the  Iliad.  The  spirit  of  Alex 
ander  was  inflamed  by  the  praises  of  Achilles ;  and  succeed 
ing  heroes  have  been  ambitious  to  tread  in  the  footsteps 
of  Alexander.  Like  him,  the  Emperor  Trajan  aspired  to 
the  conquest  of  the  East."  * 

The  "advertisement"  to  the  first  octavo  edition  pub 
lished  in  1783  is  an  instance  of  Gibbon's  truthfulness.  He 
wrote,  "Some  alterations  and  improvements  had  presented 
themselves  to  my  mind,  but  I  was  unwilling  to  injure  or 
offend  the  purchasers  of  the  preceding  editions."  Then  he 
seems  to  reflect  that  this  is  not  quite  the  whole  truth  and 
adds,  "Perhaps  I  may  stand  excused  if,  amidst  the  avoca 
tions  of  a  busy  winter,  I  have  preferred  the  pleasures  of 
1  Bury's  ed.,  xxxv,  xxxvi. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  131 

composition  and  study  to  the  minute  diligence  of  revising 
a  former  publication."  1 

The  severest  criticism  that  Gibbon  has  received  is  on 
his  famous  chapters  XV  and  XVI  which  conclude  his 
first  volume  in  the  original  quarto  edition  of  1776.  We 
may  disregard  the  flood  of  contemporary  criticism  from 
certain  people  who  were  excited  by  what  they  deemed  an 
attack  on  the  Christian  religion.  Dean  Milman,  who  ob 
jected  seriously  to  much  in  these  chapters,  consulted  these 
various  answers  to  Gibbon  on  the  first  appearance  of  his 
work  with,  according  to  his  own  confession,  little  profit.2 
"Against  his  celebrated  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  chapters," 
wrote  Buckle,  "all  the  devices  of  controversy  have  been 
exhausted ;  but  the  only  result  has  been,  that  while  the 
fame  of  the  historian  is  untarnished,  the  attacks  of  his 
enemies  are  falling  into  complete  oblivion.  The  work  of 
Gibbon  remains;  but  who  is  there  who  feels  any  interest 
in  what  was  written  against  him?"  3  During  the  last  gen 
eration,  however,  criticism  has  taken  another  form  and  scien 
tific  men  now  do  not  exactly  share  Buckle's  gleeful  opinion. 
Both  Bury  and  Cotter  Morison  state  or  imply  that  well- 
grounded  exceptions  may  be  taken  to  Gibbon's  treatment 
of  the  early  Christian  church.  He  ignored  some  facts ;  his 
combination  of  others,  his  inferences,  his  opinions  are  not 
fair  and  unprejudiced.  A  further  grave  objection  may  be 
made  to  the  tone  of  these  two  chapters :  sarcasm  pervades 
them  and  the  Gibbon  sneer  has  become  an  apt  charac 
terization. 

Francis  Parkman  admitted  that  he  was  a  reverent  ag 
nostic,  and  if  Gibbon  had  been  a  reverent  free-thinker  these 
two  chapters  would  have  been  far  different  in  tone.  Lecky 

1  Smith's  ed.,  I,  xxi.  2  Smith's  ed.,  I,  xvii. 

3  History  of  Civilization,  II,  308  n. 


132  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

regarded  the  Christian  church  as  a  great  institution  worthy 
of  reverence  and  respect  although  he  stated  the  central 
thesis  of  Gibbon  with  emphasis  just  as  great.  Of  the  con 
version  of  the  Roman  Empire  to  Christianity,  Lecky  wrote, 
"it  may  be  boldly  asserted  that  the  assumption  of  a  moral 
or  intellectual  miracle  is  utterly  gratuitous.  Never  before 
was  a  religious  transformation  so  manifestly  inevitable."  * 
Gibbon's  sneering  tone  was  a  characteristic  of  his  time. 
There  existed  during  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury,  wrote  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  "an  unphilosophical 
and  indeed  fanatical  animosity  against  Christianity."  But 
Gibbon's  private  defense  is  entitled  to  consideration  as 
placing  him  in  a  better  light.  "The  primitive  church,  which 
I  have  treated  with  some  freedom,"  he  wrote  to  Lord  Shef 
field  in  1791,  "was  itself  at  that  time  an  innovation,  and 
I  was  attached  to  the  old  Pagan  establishment."  2  "Had  I 
believed,"  he  said  in  his  Autobiography,  "that  the  ma 
jority  of  English  readers  were  so  fondly  attached  to  the 
name  and  shadow  of  Christianity,  had  I  foreseen  that  the 
pious,  the  timid,  and  the  prudent  would  feel,  or  affect  to 
feel,  with  such  exquisite  sensibility,  I  might  perhaps  have 
softened  the  two  invidious  chapters."  3 

On  the  other  hand  Gibbon's  treatment  of  Julian  the  Apos 
tate  is  in  accordance  with  the  best  modern  standard.  It 
might  have  been  supposed  that  a  quasi-Pagan,  as  he  avowed 
himself,  would  have  emphasized  Julian's  virtues  and  ig 
nored  his  weaknesses  as  did  Voltaire,  who  invested  him  with 
all  the  good  qualities  of  Trajan,  Cato,  and  Julius  Caesar,  with 
out  their  defects.4  Robertson  indeed  feared  that  he  might 
fail  in  this  part  of  the  history ; 5  but  Gibbon  weighed  Julian 
in  the  balance,  duly  estimating  his  strength  and  his  weak- 

1  Morals,  I,  419.  2  Letters,  II,  237.  3  Autobiography,  316. 

4  Cotter  Morison,  1 18.  8  Sainte-Beuve,  458. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  133 

ness,  with  the  result  that  he  has  given  a  clear  and  just 
account  in  his  best  and  most  dignified  style.1 

Gibbon's  treatment  of  Theodora,  the  wife  of  Justinian,  is 
certainly  open  to  objection.  Without  proper  sifting  and  a 
reasonable  skepticism,  he  has  incorporated  into  his  narra 
tive  the  questionable  account  with  all  its  salacious  details 
which  Procopius  gives  in  his  Secret  History,  Gibbon's 
love  of  a  scandalous  tale  getting  the  better  of  his  historical 
criticism.  He  has  not  neglected  to  urge  a  defense.  "I  am 
justified,"  he  wrote,  "in  painting  the  manners  of  the  times; 
the  vices  of  Theodora  form  an  essential  feature  in  the 
reign  and  character  of  Justinian.  .  .  .  My  English  text  is 
chaste,  and  all  licentious  passages  are  left  in  the  obscurity 
of  a  learned  language."  2  This  explanation  satisfies  neither 
Cotter  Morison  nor  Bury,  nor  would  it  hold  for  a  moment  as 
a  justification  of  a  historian  of  our  own  day.  Gibbon  is 
really  so  scientific,  so  much  like  a  late  nineteenth-century 
man,  that  we  do  right  to  subject  him  to  our  present-day 
rigid  tests. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  about  Gibbon's  style, 
which  we  all  know  is  pompous  and  Latinized.  On  a  long 
reading  his  rounded  and  sonorous  periods  become  weari 
some,  and  one  wishes  that  occasionally  a  sentence  would 
terminate  with  a  small  word,  even  a  preposition.  One 
feels  as  did  Dickens  after  walking  for  an  hour  or  two  about 
the  handsome  but  "distractingly  regular"  city  of  Phila 
delphia.  "I  felt,"  he  wrote,  "that  I  would  have  given 
the  world  for  a  crooked  street."  3  Despite  the  pomposity, 
Gibbon's  style  is  correct,  and  the  exact  use  of  words  is  a 
marvel.  It  is  rare,  I  think,  that  any  substitution  or  change 
of  words  will  improve  upon  the  precision  of  the  text.  His 

1  Cotter  Morison,  120.  2  Autobiography,  337  n. 

3  American  Notes,  Chap.  VII. 


134  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

compression  and  selection  of  salient  points  are  remarkable. 
Amid  some  commonplace  philosophy  he  frequently  rises 
to  a  generalization  as  brilliant  as  it  is  truthful.  Then,  too, 
one  is  impressed  with  the  dignity  of  history ;  one  feels  that 
Gibbon  looked  upon  his  work  as  very  serious,  and  thought 
with  Thucydides,  "My  history  is  an  everlasting  possession, 
not  a  prize  composition  which  is  heard  and  forgotten." 

To  a  writer  of  history  few  things  are  more  interesting  than 
a  great  historian's  autobiographical  remarks  which  relate 
to  the  composition  of  his  work.  "Had  I  been  more  indigent 
or  more  wealthy,"  wrote  Gibbon  in  his  Autobiography, 
"I  should  not  have  possessed  the  leisure  or  the  perseverance 
to  prepare  and  execute  my  voluminous  history."  1  "  Not 
withstanding  the  hurry  of  business  and  pleasure,"  he  wrote 
from  London  in  1778,  "I  steal  some  moments  for  the  Roman 
Empire."  2  Between  the  writing  of  the  first  three  and  the 
last  three  volumes,  he  took  a  rest  of  "near  a  twelvemonth" 
and  gave  expression  to  a  thought  which  may  be  echoed  by 
every  studious  writer,  "Yet  in  the  luxury  of  freedom,  I 
began  to  wish  for  the  daily  task,  the  active  pursuit  which 
gave  a  value  to  every  book  and  an  object  to  every  inquiry."  3 
Every  one  who  has  written  a  historical  book  will  sympathize 
with  the  following  expression  of  personal  experience  as  he  ap 
proached  the  completion  of  "The  Decline  and  Fall" :  "Let  no 
man  who  builds  a  house  or  writes  a  book  presume  to  say  when 
he  will  have  finished.  When  he  imagines  that  he  is  draw 
ing  near  to  his  journey's  end,  Alps  rise  on  Alps,  and  he  con 
tinually  finds  something  to  add  and  something  to  correct."4 

Plain  truthful  tales  are  Gibbon's  autobiographies.  The 
style  is  that  of  the  history,  and  he  writes  of  himself  as  frankly 
as  he  does  of  any  of  his  historical  characters.  His  fail- 

'p.  155.  2  Letters,  1,331. 

8  Autobiography,  325.  *  Letters,  II,  143. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  135 

ings  —  what  he  has  somewhere  termed  "the  amiable  weak 
nesses  of  human  nature"  —  are  disclosed  with  the  openness 
of  a  Frenchman.  All  but  one  of  the  ten  years  between  1783 
and  1793,  between  the  ages  of  46  and  56,  he  passed  at  Lau 
sanne.  There  he  completed  "The  Decline  and  Fall, "  and  of 
that  period  he  spent  from  August,  1787,  to  July,  1788,  in 
England  to  look  after  the  publication  of  the  last  three  vol 
umes.  His  life  in  Lausanne  was  one  of  study,  writing,  and 
agreeable  society,  of  which  his  correspondence  with  his 
English  friends  gives  an  animated  account.  The  two 
things  one  is  most  impressed  with  are  his  love  for  books 
and  his  love  for  Madeira.  "Though  a  lover  of  society,"  he 
wrote,  "my  library  is  the  room  to  which  I  am  most  at 
tached."  1  While  getting  settled  at  Lausanne,  he  com 
plains  that  his  boxes  of  books  "loiter  on  the  road."  2  And 
then  he  harps  on  another  string.  "Good  Madeira,"  he 
writes,  "is  now  become  essential  to  my  health  and  reputa 
tion;"  3  yet  again,  "If  I  do  not  receive  a  supply  of  Madeira 
in  the  course  of  the  summer,  I  shall  be  in  great  shame  and 
distress."  4  His  good  friend  in  England,  Lord  Sheffield, 
regarded  his  prayer  and  sent  him  a  hogshead  of  "best  old 
Madeira"  and  a  tierce,  containing  six  dozen  bottles  of  "finest 
Malmsey,"  and  at  the  same  time  wrote :  t  You  will  remember 
that  a  hogshead  is  on  his  travels  through  the  torrid  zone  for 
you.  ...  No  wine  is  meliorated  to  a  greater  degree  by 
keeping  than  Madeira,  and  you  latterly  appeared  so  raven 
ous  for  it,  that  I  must  conceive  you  wish  to  have  a  stock." 
Gibbon's  devotion  to  Madeira  bore  its  penalty.  At  the  age 
of  forty-eight  he  sent  this  account  to  his  stepmother:  "I 
was  in  hopes  that  my  old  Enemy  the  Gout  had  given  over 
the  attack,  but  the  Villain,  with  his  ally  the  winter,  con- 

1  Letters,  II,  130.         2  Ibid.,  89.         3  Ibid.,  211.          *  Ibid.,  217. 
6  Ibid.,  II,  232. 


136  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

vinced  me  of  my  error,  and  about  the  latter  end  of  March  I 
found  myself  a  prisoner  in  my  library  and  my  great  chair. 
I  attempted  twice  to  rise,  he  twice  knocked  me  down  again 
and  kept  possession  of  both  my  feet  and  knees  longer  (I 
must  confess)  than  he  ever  had  done  before."  Eager  to 
finish  his  history,  he  lamented  that  his  "long  gout"  lost  him 
"three  months  in  the  spring."  Thus  as  you  go  through  his 
correspondence,  you  find  that  orders  for  Madeira  and  at 
tacks  of  gout  alternate  with  regularity.  Gibbon  appar 
ently  did  not  connect  the  two  as  cause  and  effect,  as  in  his 
autobiography  he  charged  his  malady  to  his  service  in  the 
Hampshire  militia,  when  "the  daily  practice  of  hard  and 
even  excessive  drinking"  had  sown  in  his  constitution 
"the  seeds  of  the  gout."  2 

Gibbon  has  never  been  a  favorite  with  women,  owing 
largely  to  his  account  of  his  early  love  affair.  While  at 
Lausanne,  he  had  heard  much  of  "the  wit  and  beauty  and 
erudition  of  Mademoiselle  Curchod"  and  when  he  first  met 
her,  he  had  reached  the  age  of  twenty.  "I  saw  and  loved," 
he  wrote.  "I  found  her  learned  without  pedantry,  lively 
in  conversation,  pure  in  sentiment,  and  elegant  in  manners. 
.  .  .  She  listened  to  the  voice  of  truth  and  passion.  .  .  . 
At  Lausanne  I  indulged  my  dream  of  felicity" ;  and  indeed 
he  appeared  to  be  an  ardent  lover.  "He  was  seen,"  said  a 
contemporary,  "stopping  country  people  near  Lausanne 
and  demanding  at  the  point  of  a  naked  dagger  whether  a 
more  adorable  creature  existed  than  Suzanne  Curchod."  3 
On  his  return  to  England,  however,  he  soon  discovered  that 
his  father  would  not  hear  of  this  alliance,  and  he  thus  related 
the  sequence:  "After  a  painful  struggle,  I  yielded  to  my 
fate.  ...  I  sighed  as  a  lover,  I  obeyed  as  a  son."  4  From 

1  Letters,  II,  129.  2  Ibid.,  189. 

3  Ibid.,  I,  40.  *  Autobiography,  pp.  151,  239. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  137 

England  he  wrote  to  Mademoiselle  Curchod  breaking  off  the 
engagement.  Perhaps  it  is  because  of  feminine  criticism 
that  Cotter  Morison  indulges  in  an  elaborate  defense  of  Gib 
bon,  which  indeed  hardly  seems  necessary.  Rousseau,  who 
was  privy  to  the  love  affair,  said  that  "  Gibbon  was  too  cold 
blooded  a  young  man  for  his  taste  or  for  Mademoiselle 
Curchod's  happiness."  l  Mademoiselle  Curchod  a  few  years 
later  married  Necker,  a  rich  Paris  banker,  who  under  Louis 
XVI  held  the  office  of  director-general  of  the  finances.  She 
was  the  mother  of  Madame  de  Stae'l,  was  a  leader  of  the 
literary  society  in  Paris  and,  despite  the  troublous  times, 
must  have  led  a  happy  life.  One  delightful  aspect  of  the 
story  is  the  warm  friendship  that  existed  between  Madame 
Necker  and  Edward  Gibbon.  This  began  less  than  a  year 
after  her  marriage.  "The  Curchod  (Madame  Necker)  I 
saw  at  Paris,"  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Holroyd.  "She  was 
very  fond  of  me  and  the  husband  particularly  civil.  Could 
they  insult  me  more  cruelly?  Ask  me  every  evening  to 
supper ;  go  to  bed,  and  leave  me  alone  with  his  wife  — 
what  an  impertinent  security!"  2 

If  women  read  the  Correspondence  as  they  do  the  Auto 
biography,  I  think  that  their  aversion  to  the  great  historian 
would  be  increased  by  these  confiding  words  to  his  step 
mother,  written  when  he  was  forty-nine:  "The  habits  of 
female  conversation  have  sometimes  tempted  me  to  acquire 
the  piece  of  furniture,  a  wife,  and  could  I  unite  in  a  single 
Woman  the  virtues  and  accomplishments  of  half  a  dozen 

1  Letters,  1,41. 

2  Letters,  I,  81.       In  1790  Madame  de  Stael,    then  at  Coppet,  wrote: 
"Nous  posse"dons  dans  ce  chateau  M.   Gibbon,   1'ancien  amoreux  de  ma 
mere,  celui  qui   voulait    l'6pouser.     Quand  je  le  vois,  je  me   demande  si 
je  serais  ne'e  de  son  union  avec  ma  mere :  je  me  reponds  que  non  et  qu'il 
suffisait  de  mon  pere  seul  pour  que  je  vinsse  au  monde."  —  Hill's  ed.,  107, 
n.  2. 


138  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

of  my  acquaintance,  I  would  instantly  pay  my  addresses 
to  the  Constellation."  1 

I  have  always  been  impressed  with  Gibbon's  pride  at 
being  the  author  of  "six  volumes  in  quartos" ;  but  as  nearly 
all  histories  now  are  published  in  octavo,  I  had  not  a  distinct 
idea  of  the  appearance  of  a  quarto  volume  until  the  prepara 
tion  of  this  essay  led  me  to  look  at  different  editions  of  Gib 
bon  in  the  Boston  Athenaeum.  There  I  found  the  quartos, 
the  first  volume  of  which  is  the  third  edition,  published  in 
1777  [it  will  be  remembered  that  the  original  publication 
of  the  first  volume  was  in  February,  1776].  The  volume 
is  11 J  inches  long  by  9  inches  wide  and  is  much  heavier  than 
our  very  heavy  octavo  volumes.  With  this  volume  in  my 
hand  I  could  appreciate  the  remark  of  the  Duke  of  Glouces 
ter  when  Gibbon  brought  him  the  second  volume  of  the 
"Decline  and  Fall."  Laying  the  quarto  on  the  table  he 
said,  "Another  d — d  thick  square  book!  Always  scribble, 
scribble,  scribble !  Eh !  Mr.  Gibbon?"  2 

During  my  researches  at  the  Athenaeum,  I  found  an  octavo 
edition,  the  first  volume  of  which  was  published  in  1791, 
and  on  the  cover  was  written,  "Given  to  the  Athenaeum  by 
Charles  Cabot.  Received  December  10,  1807."  This  was 
the  year  of  the  foundation  of  the  Athenaeum.  On  the  quarto 
of  1777  there  was  no  indication,  but  the  scholarly  cataloguer 
informed  me  that  it  was  probably  also  received  in  1807. 
Three  later  editions  than  these  two  are  in  this  library,  the 
last  of  which  is  Bury's  of  1900  to  which  I  have  constantly 
referred.  Meditating  in  the  quiet  alcove,  with  the  two 
early  editions  of  Gibbon  before  me,  I  found  an  answer  to 
the  comment  of  H.  G.  Wells  in  his  book  "The  Future  in 
America"  which  I  confess  had  somewhat  irritated  me. 
Thus  wrote  Wells:  "Frankly  I  grieve  over  Boston  as  a 
1  Letters,  II,  143.  2  Birkbeck  Hill's  ed.,  127. 


EDWARD  GIBBON  139 

great  waste  of  leisure  and  energy,  as  a  frittering  away  of 
moral  and  intellectual  possibilities.  We  give  too  much  to 
the  past.  .  .  .  We  are  obsessed  by  the  scholastic  prestige 
of  mere  knowledge  and  genteel  remoteness."  l  Pondering 
this  iconoclastic  utterance,  how  delightful  it  is  to  light  upon 
evidence  in  the  way  of  well-worn  volumes  that,  since  1807, 
men  and  women  here  have  been  carefully  reading  Gibbon, 
who,  as  Dean  Milman  said,  "has  bridged  the  abyss  between 
ancient  and  modern  times  and  connected  together  the  two 
worlds  of  history."  2  A  knowledge  of  "The  Decline  and 
Fall"  is  a  basis  for  the  study  of  all  other  history;  it  is  a 
mental  discipline,  and  a  training  for  the  problems  of  modern 
life.  These  Athenaeum  readers  did  not  waste  their  leisure, 
did  not  give  too  much  to  the  past.  They  were  supremely 
right  to  take  account  of  the  scholastic  prestige  of  Gibbon, 
and  to  endeavor  to  make  part  of  their  mental  fiber  this 
greatest  history  of  modern  times. 

I  will  close  with  a  quotation  from  the  Autobiography, 
which  in  its  sincerity  and  absolute  freedom  from  literary 
cant  will  be  cherished  by  all  whose  desire  is  to  behold  "the 
bright  countenance  of  truth  in  the  quiet  and  still  air  of  de 
lightful  studies."  "I  have  drawn  a  high  prize  in  the  lottery 
of  life,"  wrote  Gibbon.  "I  am  disgusted  with  the  affecta 
tion  of  men  of  letters,  who  complain  that  they  have  re 
nounced  a  substance  for  a  shadow  and  that  their  fame 
affords  a  poor  compensation  for  envy,  censure,  and  persecu 
tion.  My  own  experience  at  least  has  taught  me  a  very 
different  lesson:  twenty  happy  years  have  been  animated 
by  the  labor  of  my  history ;  and  its  success  has  given  me  a 
name,  a  rank,  a  character  in  the  world,  to  which  I  should 
not  otherwise  have  been  entitled.  .  .  .  D'Alembert  re 
lates  that  as  he  was  walking  in  the  gardens  of  Sans-souci 
1  p.  235.  2  Smith's  ed.,  I,  vii. 


140  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

with  the  King  of  Prussia,  Frederick  said  to  him,  'Do  you 
see  that  old  woman,  a  poor  weeder,  asleep  on  that  sunny 
bank?  She  is  probably  a  more  happy  Being  than  either  of 
us/  "  Now  the  comment  of  Gibbon:  "The  King  and  the 
Philosopher  may  speak  for  themselves ;  for  my  part  I  do 
not  envy  the  old  woman."  1 

1  Autobiography,  343,  346. 


SAMUEL  RAWSON  GARDINER 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
March  meeting  of  1902,  and  printed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly, 
May,  1902. 


SAMUEL  RAWSON  GARDINER 

IT  is  my  purpose  to  say  a  word  of  Samuel  Rawson  Gar 
diner,  the  English  historian,  who  died  February  23,  1902, 
and  who  in  his  research  and  manner  of  statement  repre 
sents  fitly  the  scientific  school  of  historical  writers.  He 
was  thorough  in  his  investigation,  sparing  neither  labor  nor 
pains  to  get  at  the  truth.  It  may  well  enough  be  true  that 
the  designedly  untruthful  historian,  like  the  undevout  as 
tronomer,  is  an  anomaly,  for  inaccuracy  comes  not  from 
purpose,  but  from  neglect.  Now  Gardiner  went  to  the  bot 
tom  of  things,  and  was  not  satisfied  until  he  had  compassed 
all  the  material  within  his  reach.  As  a  matter  of  course  he 
read  many  languages.  Whether  his  facts  were  in  Spanish, 
Italian,  French,  German,  Dutch,  Swedish,  or  English  made 
apparently  no  difference.  Nor  .did  he  stop  at  what  was  in 
plain  language.  He  read  a  diary  written  chiefly  in  symbols, 
and  many  letters  in  cipher.  A  large  part  of  his  material 
was  in  manuscript,  which  entailed  greater  labor  than  if  it 
had  been  in  print.  As  one  reads  the  prefaces  to  his  various 
volumes  and  his  footnotes,  amazement  is  the  word  to  ex 
press  the  feeling  that  a  man  could  have  accomplished  so 
much  in  forty-seven  years.  One  feels  that  there  is  no  one 
sided  use  of  any  material.  The  Spanish,  the  Venetian,  the 
French,  the  Dutch  nowhere  displaces  the  English.  In 
Froude's  Elizabeth  one  gets  the  impression  that  the  Si- 
mancas  manuscripts  furnish  a  disproportionate  basis  of  the 
narrative ;  in  Ranke's  England,  that  the  story  is  made  up 
too  much  from  the  Venetian  archives.  Gardiner  himself 
copied  many  Simancas  manuscripts  in  Spain,  and  he  studied 

143 


144  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  archives  in  Venice,  Paris,  Brussels,  and  Rome,  but  these, 
and  all  the  other  great  mass  of  foreign  material,  are  kept 
adjunctive  to  that  found  in  his  own  land.  My  impression 
from  a  study  of  his  volumes  is  that  more  than  half  of  his 
material  is  in  manuscript,  but  because  he  has  matter  which 
no  one  else  had  ever  used,  he  does  not  neglect  the  printed 
pages  open  to  every  one.  To  form  "a  judgment  on  the 
character  and  aims  of  Cromwell,"  he  writes,  "it  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  take  Carlyle's  monumental  work  as  a  starting 
point;"1  yet,  distrusting  Carlyle's  printed  transcripts,  he 
goes  back  to  the  original  speeches  and  letters  themselves. 
Carlyle,  he  says,  "amends  the  text  without  warning"  in 
many  places;  these  emendations  Gardiner  corrects,  and 
out  of  the  abundance  of  his  learning  he  stops  a  moment  to 
show  how  Carlyle  has  misled  the  learned  Dr.  Murray  in 
attributing  to  Cromwell  the  use  of  the  word  "communica 
tive"  in  its  modern  meaning,  when  it  was  on  the  contrary 
employed  in  what  is  now  an  obsolete  sense.2 

Gardiner's  great  work  is .  the  History  of  England  from 
1603  to  1656.  In  the  revised  editions  there  are  ten  volumes 
called  the  "History  of  England,  from  the  Accession  of 
James  I  to  the  Outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,"  and  four 
volumes  on  the  Great  Civil  War.  Since  this  revision  he  has 
published  three  volumes  on  the  History  of  the  Common 
wealth  and  the  Protectorate.  He  was  also  the  author  of  a 
number  of  smaller  volumes,  a  contributor  to  the  Ency 
clopaedia  Britannica  and  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biog 
raphy,  and  for  ten  years  editor-in-chief  of  the  English 
Historical  Review. 

I  know  not  which  is  the  more  remarkable,  the  learning, 
accuracy,  and  diligence  of  the  man,  or  withal  his  modesty. 

1  History  of  the  Great  Civil  War,  I,  viii. 

2  History  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate,  III,  27. 


SAMUEL  RAWSON  GARDINER  145 

With  his  great  store  of  knowledge,  the  very  truthfulness  of 
his  soul  impels  him  to  be  forward  in  admitting  his  own  mis 
takes.  Lowell  said  in  1878  that  Darwin  was  "  almost  the 
only  perfectly  disinterested  lover  of  truth"  he  had  ever 
encountered.  Had  Lowell  known  the  historian  as  we  know 
him,  he  would  have  placed  Gardiner  upon  the  same  eleva 
tion.  In  the  preface  to  the  revised  ten-volume  edition  he 
alludes  to  the  " defects"  of  his  work.  "Much  material," 
he  wrote,  "has  accumulated  since  the  early  volumes  were 
published,  and  my  own  point  of  view  is  not  quite  the  same 
as  it  was  when  I  started  with  the  first  years  of  James  I."  l 
The  most  important  contribution  to  this  portion  of  his 
period  had  been  Spedding's  edition  of  Bacon's  Letters  and 
Life.  In  a  note  to  page  208  of  his  second  volume  he  tells 
how  Spedding's  arguments  have  caused  him  to  modify 
some  of  his  statements,  although  the  two  regard  the  history 
of  the  seventeenth  century  differently.  Writing  this  soon 
after  the  death  of  Spedding,  to  which  he  refers  as  "the  loss 
of  one  whose  mind  was  so  acute  and  whose  nature  was  so 
patient  and  kindly,"  he  adds,  "It  was  a  true  pleasure  to 
have  one's  statements  and  arguments  exposed  to  the  testing 
fire  of  his  hostile  criticism."  Having  pointed  out  later  some 
inaccuracies  in  the  work  of  Professor  Masson,  he  accuses 
himself.  "I  have  little  doubt,"  he  writes,  "that  if  my  work 
were  subjected  to  as  careful  a  revision,  it  would  yield  a  far 
greater  crop  of  errors."  2 

Gardiner  was  born  in  1829.  Soon  after  he  was  twenty- 
six  years  old  he  conceived  the  idea  of  writing  the  history  of 
England  from  the  accession  of  James  I  to  the  restoration  of 
Charles  II.  It  was  a  noble  conception,  but  his  means  were 
small.  Having  married,  as  his  first  wife,  the  youngest 
daughter  of  Edward  Irving,  the  enthusiastic  founder  of  the 

1  History,  I,  v.  2  Ibid.,  IX,  viii. 

L 


146  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Catholic  Apostolic  Church,  he  became  an  Irvingite.  Be 
cause  he  was  an  Irvingite,  his  university,  —  he  was  a  son  of 
Oxford,  —  so  it  is  commonly  said,  would  give  him  no  posi 
tion  whereby  he  might  gain  his  living.  Nevertheless,  Gar 
diner  studied  and  toiled,  and  in  1863  published  two  volumes 
entitled  "  A  History  of  England  from  the  Accession  of  James 
I  to  the  Disgrace  of  Chief  Justice  Coke."  Of  this  work  only 
one  hundred  and  forty  copies  were  sold.  Still  he  struggled 
on.  In  1869  two  volumes  called  "  Prince  Charles  and  the 
Spanish  Marriage"  were  published  and  sold  five  hundred 
copies.  Six  years  later  appeared  two  volumes  entitled 
"  A  History  of  England  under  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  and 
Charles  I."  This  installment  paid  expenses,  but  no  profit. 
One  is  reminded  of  what  Carlyle  said  about  the  pecuniary 
rewards  of  literary  men  in  England:  " Homer's  Iliad  would 
have  brought  the  author,  had  he  offered  it  to  Mr.  Murray 
on  the  half-profit  system,  say  five-and-twenty  guineas. 
The  Prophecies  of  Isaiah  would  have  made  a  small  article 
in  a  review  which  .  .  .  could  cheerfully  enough  have  re 
munerated  him  with  a  five-pound  note."  The  first  book 
from  which  Gardiner  received  any  money  was  a  little  volume 
for  the  Epochs  of  Modern  History  Series  on  the  Thirty 
Years'  War,  published  in  1874.  Two  more  installments  of 
the  history  appearing  in  1877  and  1881  made  up  the  first 
edition  of  what  is  now  our  ten-volume  history,  but  in  the 
meantime  some  of  the  volumes  went  out  of  print.  It  was 
not  until  1883,  the  year  of  the  publication  of  the  revised 
edition,  that  the  value  of  his  labors  was  generally  recognized. 
During  this  twenty-eight  years,  from  the  age  of  twenty-six 
to  fifty-four,  Gardiner  had  his  living  to  earn.  He  might 
have  recalled  the  remark  made,  I  think,  by  either  Goldsmith 
or  Lamb,  that  the  books  which  will  live  are  not  those  by 
which  we  ourselves  can  live.  Therefore  Gardiner  got  his 


SAMUEL  RAWSON  GARDINER  147 

bread  by  teaching.  He  became  a  professor  in  King's  Col 
lege,  London,  and  he  lectured  on  history  for  the  London 
Society  for  the  Extension  of  University  Teaching,  having 
large  audiences  all  over  London,  and  being  well  appreciated 
in  the  East  End.  He  wrote  schoolbooks  on  history. 
Finally  success  came  twenty-eight  years  after  his  glorious 
conception,  twenty  years  after  the  publication  of  his  first 
volume.  He  had  had  a  hard  struggle  for  a  living  with  money 
coming  in  by  driblets.  Bread  won  in  such  a  way  is  come 
by  hard,  yet  he  remained  true  to  his  ideal.  His  potboilers 
were  good  and  honest  books ;  his  brief  history  on  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  has  received  the  praise  of  scholars.  Recognition 
brought  him  money  rewards.  In  1882  Mr.  Gladstone  be 
stowed  upon  him  a  civil  list  pension  of  £150  a  year.  Two 
years  later  All  Souls  College,  Oxford,  elected  him  to  a  re 
search  fellowship ;  when  this  expired  Merton  made  him  a 
fellow.  Academic  honors  came  late.  Not  until  1884,  when 
he  was  fifty-five,  did  he  take  his  degree  of  M.A.  Edinburgh 
conferred  upon  him  an  LL.D.,  and  Gottingen  a  Ph.D. ;  but 
he  was  sixty-six  when  he  received  the  coveted  D.C.L.  from 
his  own  university.  The  year  previous  Lord  Rosebery 
offered  him  the  Regius  Professorship  of  History  at  Oxford, 
but  he  declined  it  because  the  prosecution  of  his  great 
work  required  him  to  be  near  the  British  Museum.  It  is 
worthy  of  mention  that  in  1874,  nine  years  before  he  was 
generally  appreciated  in  England,  the  Massachusetts  His 
torical  Society  elected  him  a  corresponding  member.1 

During  the  latter  part  of  his  life  Gardiner  resided  in  the 
country  near  London,  whence  it  took  him  about  an  hour  to 
reach  the  British  Museum,  where  he  did  his  work.  He 
labored  on  his  history  from  eleven  o'clock  to  half-past  four, 
with  an  intermission  of  half  an  hour  for  luncheon.  He  did 
1  He  was  transferred  to  the  roll  of  honorary  members  in  October,  1896. 


148  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

not  dictate  to  a  stenographer,  but  wrote  everything  out. 
Totally  unaccustomed  to  collaboration,  he  never  employed 
a  secretary  or  assistant  of  any  kind.  In  his  evenings  he 
did  no  serious  labor ;  he  spent  them  with  his  family,  attended 
to  his  correspondence,  or  read  a  novel.  Thus  he  wrought 
five  hours  daily.  What  a  brain,  and  what  a  splendid  train 
ing  he  had  given  himself  to  accomplish  such  results  in  so 
short  a  working  day ! 

In  the  preface  to  his  first  volume  of  the  "History  of  the 
Commonwealth,"  published  in  1894,  Gardiner  said  that  he 
was  "entering  upon  the  third  and  last  stage  of  a  task  the 
accomplishment  of  which  seemed  to  me  many  years  ago  to 
be  within  the  bounds  of  possibility."  One  more  volume 
bringing  the  history  down  to  the  death  of  Cromwell  would 
have  completed  the  work,  and  then  Mr.  Charles  H.  Firth, 
a  fellow  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford,  was  to  take  up  the  story. 
Firth  now  purposes  to  begin  his  narrative  with  the  year  1656. 
Gardiner's  mantle  has  fallen  on  worthy  shoulders. 

Where  historical  scholars  congregate  in  England  and 
America,  Gardiner  is  highly  esteemed.  But  the  critics 
must  have  their  day.  They  cannot  attack  him  for  lack  of 
diligence  and  accuracy,  which  according  to  Gibbon,  the 
master  of  us  all,  are  the  prime  requisites  of  a  historian,  so 
they  assert  that  he  was  deficient  in  literary  style,  he  had  no 
dramatic  power,  his  work  is  not  interesting  and  will  not  live. 
Gardiner  is  the  product  solely  of  the  university  and  the 
library.  You  may  visualize  him  at  Oxford,  in  the  British 
Museum,  or  at  work  in  the  archives  on  the  Continent,  but 
of  affairs  and  of  society  by  personal  contact  he  knew  nothing. 
In  short,  he  was  not  a  man  of  the  world,  and  the  histories 
must  be  written,  so  these  critics  aver,  by  those  who  have  an 
actual  knowledge  by  experience  of  their  fellow-men.  It  is 
profitable  to  examine  these  dicta  by  the  light  of  concrete 


SAMUEL  RAWSON  GARDINER  149 

examples.  Froude  saw  much  of  society,  and  was  a  man  of 
the  world.  He  wrote  six  volumes  on  the  reign  of  Elizabeth, 
from  which  we  get  the  distinct  impression  that  the  dominant 
characteristics  of  Elizabeth  were  meanness,  vacillation, 
selfishness,  and  cruelty.  Gardiner  in  an  introductory  chap 
ter  of  forty-three  pages  restores  to  us  the  great  queen  of 
Shakespeare,  who  brought  upon  her  land  "a  thousand, 
thousand  blessings."  She  loved  her  people  well,  he  writes, 
and  ruled  them  wisely.  She  "  cleared  the  way  for  liberty, 
though  she  understood  it  not."  *  Elsewhere  he  speaks  of 
"her  high  spirit  and  enlightened  judgment."  2  The  writer 
who  has  spent  his  life  in  the  library  among  dusty  archives 
estimates  the  great  ruler  more  correctly  than  the  man  of 
the  world.  We  all  know  Macaulay,  a  member  of  Parlia 
ment,  a  member  of  the  Supreme  Council  of  India,  a  cabinet 
minister,  a  historian  of  great  merit,  a  brilliant  man  of  letters. 
In  such  a  one,  according  to  the  principles  laid  down  by 
these  critics,  we  should  expect  to  find  a  supreme  judge  of 
men.  Macaulay  in  his  essays  and  the  first  chapter  of  the 
History  painted  Wentworth  and  Laud  in  the  very  black 
est  of  colors,  which  "had  burned  themselves  into  the  heart 
of  the  people  of  England."  Gardiner  came.  Wentworth 
and  Laud,  he  wrote,  were  controlled  by  a  "noble  ambition," 
which  was  "not  stained  with  personal  selfishness  or  greed."  3 
"England  may  well  be  proud  of  possessing  in  Wentworth  a 
nobler  if  a  less  practical  statesman  than  Richelieu,  of  the 
type  to  which  the  great  cardinal  belonged."  Again  Went 
worth  was  "the  high-minded,  masterful  statesman,  erring 
gravely  through  defects  of  temper  and  knowledge."  5  From 
Macaulay  we  carry  away  the  impression  that  Wentworth  was 
very  wicked  and  that  Cromwell  was  very  good.  Gardiner 

1  History,  I,  43.          2  Ibid.,  VIII,  36.          3  Ibid.,  67.          *  Ibid.,  215. 
*  Ibid.,  IX,  229. 


150  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

loved  Cromwell  not  less  than  did  Macaulay,  but  thus  he 
speaks  of  his  government:  "Step  by  step  the  government 
of  the  Commonwealth  was  compelled  ...  to  rule  by 
means  which  every  one  of  its  members  would  have  con 
demned  if  they  had  been  employed  by  Charles  or  Went 
worth."  Is  it  not  a  triumph  for  the  bookish  man  that  in 
his  estimate  of  Wentworth  and  Laud  he  has  with  him  the 
consensus  of  the  historical  scholars  of  England? 

What  a  change  there  has  been  in  English  opinion  of  Crom 
well  in  the  last  half  century !  Unquestionably  that  is  due 
to  Carlyle  more  than  to  any  other  one  man,  but  there  might 
have  been  a  reaction  from  the  conception  of  the  hero  wor 
shiper  had  it  not  been  supported  and  somewhat  modified 
by  so  careful  and  impartial  a  student  as  Gardiner. 

The  alteration  of  sentiment  toward  Wentworth  and  Laud 
is  principally  due  to  Gardiner,  that  toward  Cromwell  is 
due  to  him  in  part.  These  are  two  of  the  striking  results, 
but  they  are  only  two  of  many  things  we  see  differently  be 
cause  of  the  single-minded  devotion  of  this  great  historian. 
We  know  the  history  in  England  from  1603  to  1656  better 
than  we  do  that  of  any  other  period  of  the  world;  and  for 
this  we  are  indebted  mainly  to  Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner. 


WILLIAM  E.  H.  LECKY 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
November  meeting  of  1903. 


WILLIAM  E.  H.  LECKY 

AMAZEMENT  was  the  feeling  of  the  reading  world  on  learn 
ing  that  the  author  of  the  History  of  Rationalism  was 
only  twenty-seven,  and  the  writer  of  the  History  of  Euro 
pean  Morals  only  thirty-one.  The  sentiment  was  that  a 
prodigy  of  learning  had  appeared,  and  a  perusal  of  these 
works  now  renders  comprehensible  the  contemporary  as 
tonishment.  The  Morals  (published  in  1869)  is  the  better 
book  of  the  two,  and,  if  I  may  judge  from  my  own  per 
sonal  experience,  it  may  be  read  with  delight  when  young, 
and  re-read  with  respect  and  advantage  at  an  age  when  the 
enthusiasms  of  youth  have  given  way  to  the  critical  attitude 
of  experience.  Grant  all  the  critics  say  of  it,  that  the  reason 
ing  by  which  Lecky  attempts  to  demolish  the  utilitarian 
theory  of  morals  is  no  longer  of  value,  and  that  it  lacks  the 
consistency  of  either  the  orthodox  or  the  agnostic,  that  there 
is  no  new  historical  light,  and  that  much  of  the  treatise  is 
commonplace,  nevertheless  the  historical  illustrations  and 
disquisitions,  the  fresh  combination  of  well-known  facts  are 
valuable  for  instruction  and  for  a  new  point  of  view.  His 
analysis  of  the  causes  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  is  drawn,  of  course,  from  Gibbon,  but  I  have  met 
those  who  prefer  the  interesting  story  of  Lecky  to  the  ma 
jestic  sweep  of  the  great  master.  Much  less  brilliant  than 
Buckle's  " History  of  Civilization,"  the  first  volume  of  which 
appeared  twelve  years  earlier,  the  Morals  has  stood  better 
the  test  of  time. 

The  intellectual  biography  of  so  precocious  a  writer  is 
interesting,  and  fortunately  it  has  been  related  by  Lecky 

153 


154  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

himself.  When  he  entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  in  1856, 
"Mill  was  in  the  zenith  of  his  fame  and  influence";  Hugh 
Miller  was  attempting  to  reconcile  the  recent  discoveries 
of  geology  with  the  Mosaic  cosmogony.  "In  poetry,"  wrote 
Lecky,  "Tennyson  and  Longfellow  reigned,  I  think  with  an 
approach  to  equality  which  has  not  continued."  In  gov 
ernment  the  orthodox  political  economists  furnished  the 
theory  and  the  Manchester  school  the  practice.  All  this 
intellectual  fermentation  affected  this  inquiring  young 
student;  but  at  first  Bishop  Butler's  Analogy  and  ser 
mons,  which  were  then  much  studied  at  Dublin,  had  the 
paramount  influence.  Of  the  living  men,  Archbishop 
Whately,  then  at  Dublin,  held  sway.  Other  writers  whom 
he  mastered  were  Coleridge,  Newman,  and  Emerson,  Pascal, 
Bossuet,  Rousseau,  and  Voltaire,  Dugald  Stewart,  and  Mill. 
In  1857  Buckle  burst  upon  the  world,  and  proved  a  stimulus 
to  Lecky  as  well  as  to  most  serious  historical  students.  The 
result  of  these  studies,  Lecky  relates,  was  his  History  of 
Rationalism,  published  in  the  early  part  of  1865. 

The  claim  made  by  many  of  Lecky's  admirers,  that  he 
was  a  philosophic  historian,  as  distinct  from  literary  his 
torians  like  Carlyle  and  Macaulay,  and  scientific  like  Stubbs 
and  Gardiner,  has  injured  him  in  the  eyes  of  many  historical 
students  who  believe  that  if  there  be  such  a  thing  as  the 
philosophy  of  history  the  narrative  ought  to  carry  it  natu 
rally.  To  interrupt  the  relation  of  events  or  the  delinea 
tion  of  character  with  parading  of  trite  reflections  or  with 
rashly  broad  generalizations  is  neither  science  nor  art. 
Lecky  has  sometimes  been  condemned  by  students  who, 
revolting  at  the  term  "philosophy"  in  connection  with 
history,  have  failed  to  read  his  greatest  work,  the  "History 
of  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century."  This  is  a  decided 
advance  on  the  History  of  Morals,  and  shows  honest 


WILLIAM  E.  H.  LECKY  155 

investigation  in  original  material,  much  of  it  manuscript, 
and  an  excellent  power  of  generalization  widely  different 
from  that  which  exhibits  itself  in  a  paltry  philosophy. 
These  volumes  are  a  real  contribution  to  historical  knowl 
edge.  Parts  of  them  which  I  like  often  to  recur  to  are  the 
account  of  the  ministry  of  Walpole,  the  treatment  of  "  par 
liamentary  corruption,"  of  the  condition  of  London,  and 
of  "national  tastes  and  manners."  His  Chapter  IX,  which 
relates  the  rise  of  Methodism,  has  a  peculiarly  attractive 
swing  and  go,  and  his  use  of  anecdote  is  effective. 

Chapter  XX,  on  the  "Causes  of  the  French  Revolution," 
covering  one  hundred  and  forty-one  pages,  is  an  ambitious 
effort,  but  it  shows  a  thorough  digestion  of  his  material, 
profound  reflection,  and  a  lively  presentation  of  his  view. 
Mr.  Morse  Stephens  believes  that  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  in 
quire  into  the  causes  of  this  political  and  social  overturn. 
If  a  historian  tells  the  how,  he  asserts  he  should  not  be  asked 
to  tell  the  why.  This  is  an  epigrammatic  statement  of  a 
tenet  of  the  scientific  historical  school  of  Oxford,  but  men 
will  always  be  interested  in  inquiring  why  the  French  Revo 
lution  happened,  and  such  chapters  as  this  of  Lecky,  a  blend 
ing  of  speculation  and  narrative,  will  hold  their  place. 
These  volumes  have  much  well  and  impartially  written 
Irish  history,  and  being  published  between  1878  and  1890, 
at  the  time  when  the  Irish  question  in  its  various  forms 
became  acute,  they  attracted  considerable  attention  from 
the  political  world.  Gladstone  was  an  admirer  of  Lecky, 
and  said  in  a  chat  with  John  Morley :  "Lecky  has  real  insight 
into  the  motives  of  statesmen.  Now  Carlyle,  so  mighty  as 
he  is  in  flash  and  penetration,  has  no  eye  for  motives.  Ma- 
caulay,  too,  is  so  caught  by  a  picture,  by  color,  by  surface, 
that  he  is  seldom  to  be  counted  on  for  just  account  of 
motive."  The  Irish  chapters  furnished  arguments  for  the 


156  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Liberals,  but  did  not  convert  Lecky  himself  to  the  policy  of 
home  rule.  When  Gladstone  and  his  party  adopted  it,  he 
became  a  Liberal  Unionist,  and  as  such  was  elected  in  1895 
a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  by  Dublin  University. 
In  view  of  the  many  comments  that  he  was  not  successful 
in  parliamentary  life,  I  may  say  that  the  election  not  only 
came  to  him  unsought,  but  that  he  recognized  that  he  was 
too  old  to  adapt  himself  to  the  atmosphere  of  the  House  of 
Commons ;  he  accepted  the  position  hi  the  belief  which  was 
pressed  upon  him  by  many  friends  that  he  could  in  Parlia 
ment  be  useful  to  the  University. 

Within  less  than  three  years  have  we  commemorated  in  this 
hall  three  great  English  historians — Stubbs,  Gardiner,  and 
Lecky.  The  one  we  honor  to-day  was  the  most  popular  of 
the  three.  Not  studied  so  much  at  the  seats  of  learning, 
he  is  better  known  to  journalists,  to  statesmen,  to  men  of 
affairs,  in  short  to  general  readers.  Even  our  Society  made 
him  an  honorary  member  fourteen  years  before  it  so  honored 
Gardiner,  although  Gardiner  was  the  older  man  and  two 
volumes  of  his  history  had  been  published  before  Lecky's 
Rationalism,  and  two  volumes  more  in  the  same  year  as 
the  Morals.  One  year  after  it  was  published,  Ration 
alism  went  into  a  third  edition.  Gardiner's  first  volumes 
sold  one  hundred  and  forty  copies.  It  must,  however,  be 
stated  that  the  Society  recognized  Gardiner's  work  as  early 
as  1874  by  electing  him  a  corresponding  member. 

It  is  difficult  to  guess  how  long  Lecky  will  be  read.  His 
popularity  is  distinct.  He  was  the  rare  combination  of  a 
scholar  and  a  man  of  the  world,  made  so  by  his  own  peculiar 
talent  and  by  lucky  opportunities.  He  was  not  obliged  to 
earn  his  living.  In  early  life,  by  intimate  personal  inter 
course,  he  drew  intellectual  inspiration  from  Dean  Milman, 
and  later  he  learned  practical  politics  through  his  friendship 


WILLIAM  E.  H.  LECKY  157 

with  Lord  Russell.  He  knew  well  Herbert  Spencer,  Huxley, 
and  Tyndall.  In  private  conversation  he  was  a  very  in 
teresting  man.  His  discourse  ran  on  books  and  on  men ;  he 
turned  from  one  to  the  other  and  mixed  up  the  two  with  a 
ready  familiarity.  He  went  much  into  London  society,  and 
though  entirely  serious  and  without  having,  so  far  as  I 
know,  a  gleam  of  humor,  he  was  a  fluent  and  entertaining 
talker. 

Mr.  Lecky  was  vitally  interested  in  the  affairs  of  this  coun 
try,  and  sympathized  with  the  North  during  our  Civil  War. 
He  once  wrote  to  me:  "I  am  old  enough  to  remember 
vividly  your  great  war,  and  was  then  much  with  an  American 
friend  —  a  very  clever  lawyer  named  George  Bemis  —  whom 
I  came  to  know  very  well  at  Rome.  ...  I  was  myself  a 
decided  Northerner,  but  the  '  right  of  revolution7  was  always 
rather  a  stumbling  block."  Talking  with  Mr.  Lecky  in 
1895,  not  long  after  the  judgment  of  the  United  States  Su 
preme  Court  that  the  income  tax  was  unconstitutional,  he 
expressed  the  opinion  that  it  was  a  grand  decision,  evidenc 
ing  a  high  respect  for  private  property,  but  in  the  next 
breath  came  the  question,  "How  are  you  ever  to  manage 
continuing  the  payment  of  those  enormous  pensions  of 
yours?" 

It  is  not,  I  think,  difficult  to  explain  why  Stubbs  and 
Gardiner  are  more  precious  possessions  for  students  than 
Lecky.  Gardiner  devoted  his  life  to  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury.  If  we  may  reckon  the  previous  preparation  and  the 
ceaseless  revision,  Stubbs  devoted  a  good  part  of  his  life  to 
the  constitutional  history  from  the  beginnings  of  it  to  Henry 
VII.  Lecky's  eight  volumes  on  the  eighteenth  century 
were  published  in  thirteen  years.  A  mastery  of  such  an 
amount  of  original  material  as  Stubbs  and  Gardiner  mas 
tered  was  impossible  within  that  time.  Lecky  had  the 


158  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

faculty  of  historic  divination  which  compensated  to  some 
extent  for  the  lack  of  a  more  thorough  study  of  the  sources. 
Genius  stood  in  the  place  of  painstaking  engrossment  in  a 
single  task. 

The  last  important  work  of  Lecky,  "  Democracy  and 
Liberty,"  was  a  brave  undertaking.  Many  years  ago  he 
wrote:  "When  I  was  deeply  immersed  in  the  ' History  of 
England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century/  I  remember  being 
struck  by  the  saying  of  an  old  and  illustrious  friend  that  he 
could  not  understand  the  state  of  mind  of  a  man  who,  when 
so  many  questions  of  burning  and  absorbing  interest  were 
rising  around  him,  could  devote  the  best  years  of  his  life  to 
the  study  of  a  vanished  past."  Hence  the  book  which  con 
sidered  present  issues  of  practical  politics  and  party  con 
troversies,  and  a  result  that  satisfied  no  party  and  hardly 
any  faction.  It  is  an  interesting  question  who  chose  the 
better  part,  —  he  or  Stubbs  and  Gardiner  —  they  who  de 
voted  themselves  entirely  to  the  past  or  he  who  made  a 
conscientious  endeavor  to  bring  to  bear  his  study  of  history 
upon  the  questions  of  the  present. 


SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
November  meeting  of  1907. 


SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE 

SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE  was  an  excellent  historian  and  in 
dustrious  writer.  His  first  important  work,  entitled  "The 
History  of  England  from  18 15,"  was  published  at  intervals 
from  1878  to  1886;  the  first  installment  appeared  when  he 
was  thirty-nine  years  old.  This  in  six  volumes  carried  the 
history  to  1858  in  an  interesting,  accurate,  and  impartial 
narrative.  Four  of  the  five  chapters  of  the  first  volume  are 
entitled  "The  Material  Condition  of  England  in  1815," 
"Society  in  England,"  "Opinion  in  1815,"  "The  Last  of  the 
Ebb  Tide,"  and  they  are  masterly  in  their  description  and 
relation.  During  the  Napoleonic  wars  business  was  good. 
The  development  of  English  manufactures,  due  largely  to 
the  introduction  of  steam  as  a  motive  power,  was  marked. 
"Twenty  years  of  war,"  he  wrote,  "had  concentrated  the 
trade  of  the  world  in  the  British  Empire."  Wheat  was 
dear;  in  consequence  the  country  gentlemen  received  high 
rents.  The  clergy,  being  largely  dependent  on  tithes,  — 
the  tenth  of  the  produce,  —  found  their  incomes  increased 
as  the  price  of  corn  advanced.  But  the  laboring  classes, 
both  those  engaged  in  manufactures  and  agriculture,  did 
not  share  in  the  general  prosperity.  Either  their  wages 
did  not  rise  at  all  or  did  not  advance  commensurately  with 
the  increase  of  the  cost  of  living  and  the  decline  in  the  value 
of  the  currency.  Walpole's  detailed  and  thorough  treat 
ment  of  this  subject  is  historic  work  of  high  value. 

In  the  third  volume  I  was  much  impressed  with  his  ac 
count  of  the  Reform  Act  of  1832.  We  all  have  read  that 
wonderful  story  over  and  over  again,  but  I  doubt  whether  its 

M  161 


162  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

salient  points  have  been  better  combined  and  presented 
than  in  Walpole's  chapter.  I  had  not  remembered  the 
reason  of  the  selection  of  Lord  John  Russell  to  present  the 
bill  in  the  House  of  Commons  when  he  was  only  Paymaster 
of  the  Forces,  without  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet.  It  will,  of 
course,  be  recalled  that  Lord  Grey,  the  Prime  Minister,  was 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and,  not  so  readily  I  think,  that 
Althorp  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  and  the  leader  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  On  Althorp,  under  ordinary  cir 
cumstances,  it  would  have  been  incumbent  to  take  charge 
of  this  highly  important  measure,  which  had  been  agreed 
upon  by  the  Cabinet  after  counsel  with  the  King.  Russell 
was  the  youngest  son  of  the  Duke  of  Bedford;  and  the 
Duke  was  one  of  the  large  territorial  magnates  and  a  pro 
prietor  of  rotten  boroughs.  "A  bill  recommended  by  his 
son's  authority,"  wrote  Walpole,  "was  likely  to  reassure 
timid  or  wavering  politicians."  "Russell,"  Walpole  con 
tinued,  "told  his  tale  in  the  plainest  language.  But  the 
tale  which  he  had  to  tell  required  no  extraordinary  language 
to  adorn  it.  The  Radicals  had  not  dared  to  expect,  the 
Tories,  in  their  wildest  fears,  had  not  apprehended,  so  com 
plete  a  measure.  Enthusiasm  was  visible  on  one  side  of 
the  House;  consternation  and  dismay  on  the  other.  At 
last,  when  Russell  read  the  list  of  boroughs  which  were 
doomed  to  extinction,  the  Tories  hoped  that  the  complete 
ness  of  the  measure  would  insure  its  defeat.  Forgetting 
their  fears,  they  began  to  be  amused  and  burst  into  peals  of 
derisive  laughter"  (III,  208). 

Walpole's  next  book  was  the  "Life  of  Lord  John  Russell," 
two  volumes  published  in  1889.  This  was  undertaken  at 
the  request  of  Lady  Russell,  who  placed  at  his  disposal  a 
mass  of  private  and  official  papers  and  "diaries  and  letters 
of  a  much  more  private  nature."  She  also  acceded  to  his 


SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE  163 

request  that  she  was  not  to  see  the  biography  until  it  was 
ready  for  publication,  so  that  the  whole  responsibility  of  it 
would  be  Walpole's  alone.  The  Queen  gave  him  access  to 
three  bound  volumes  of  Russell's  letters  to  herself,  and  sanc 
tioned  the  publication  of  certain  letters  of  King  William  IV. 
Walpole  wrote  the  biography  in  about  two  years  and  a  half ; 
and  this,  considering  that  at  the  time  he  held  an  active  office, 
displayed  unusual  industry.  If  I  may  judge  the  work  by  a 
careful  study  of  the  chapter  on  "The  American  Civil  War," 
it  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  political  history. 

Passing  over  three  minor  publications,  we  come  to  Wai- 
pole's  "History  of  Twenty-five  Years,"  two  volumes  of 
which  were  published  in  1904.  A  brief  extract  from  his 
preface  is  noteworthy,  written  as  it  is  by  a  man  of  keen  in 
telligence,  with  great  power  of  investigation  and  continuous 
labor,  and  possessed  of  a  sound  judgment.  After  a  reference 
to  his  "History  of  England  from  1815,"  he  said :  "The  time 
has  consequently  arrived  when  it  ought  to  be  as  possible  to 
write  the  History  of  England  from  1857  to  1880,  as  it  was 
twenty  years  ago  to  bring  down  the  narrative  of  that  History 
to  1856  or  1857.  ...  So  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  most  of 
the  material  which  is  likely  to  be  available  for  British  history 
in  the  period  with  which  these  two  volumes  are  concerned 
[1856-1870]  is  already  accessible.  It  is  not  probable  that 
much  which  is  wholly  new  remains  unavailable."  I  read 
carefully  these  two  volumes  when  they  first  appeared,  and 
found  them  exceedingly  fascinating.  Palmerston  and  Rus 
sell,  Gladstone  and  Disraeli,  are  made  so  real  that  we  follow 
their  contests  as  if  we  ourselves  had  a  hand  in  them.  A  half 
dozen  or  more  years  ago  an  Englishman  told  me  that  Palmer 
ston  and  Russell  were  no  longer  considered  of  account  in 
England.  But  I  do  not  believe  one  can  rise  from  reading 
these  volumes  without  being  glad  of  a  knowledge  of  these 


164  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

two  men  whose  patriotism  was  of  a  high  order.  Walpole's 
several  characterizations,  in  a  summing  up  of  Palmerston, 
display  his  knowledge  of  men.  "Men  pronounced  Lord 
Melbourne  indifferent,"  he  wrote,  "Sir  Robert  Peel  cold, 
Lord  John  Russell  uncertain,  Lord  Aberdeen  weak,  Lord 
Derby  haughty,  Mr.  Gladstone  subtle,  Lord  Beaconsfield 
unscrupulous.  But  they  had  no  such  epithet  for  Lord 
Palmerston.  He  was  as  earnest  as  Lord  Melbourne  was 
indifferent,  as  strong  as  Lord  Aberdeen  was  weak,  as  honest 
as  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  unscrupulous.  Sir  Robert  Peel 
repelled  men  by  his  temper;  Lord  John  Russell,  by  his 
coldness;  Lord  Derby  offended  them  by  his  pride;  Mr. 
Gladstone  distracted  them  by  his  subtlety.  But  Lord 
Palmerston  drew  both  friends  and  foes  together  by  the 
warmth  of  his  manners  and  the  excellence  of  his  heart" 
(I,  525). 

Walpole's  knowledge  of  continental  politics  was  appar 
ently  thorough.  At  all  events,  any  one  who  desires  two 
entrancing  tales,  should  read  the  chapter  on  "The  Union  of 
Italy,"  of  which  Cavour  and  Napoleon  III  are  the  heroes; 
and  the  two  chapters  entitled  "The  Growth  of  Prussia  and 
the  Decline  of  France"  and  "The  Fall  of  the  Second  Em 
pire."  In  these  two  chapters  Napoleon  III  again  appears, 
but  Bismarck  is  the  hero.  Walpole's  chapter  on  "The 
American  Civil  War"  is  the  writing  of  a  broad-minded,  in 
telligent  man,  who  could  look  on  two  sides. 

Of  Walpole's  last  book,  "Studies  in  Biography,"  pub 
lished  in  1907,  I  have  left  myself  no  time  to  speak.  Those 
who  are  interested  in  it  should  read  the  review  of  it  in  the 
Nation  early  this  year,  which  awards  it  high  and  unusual 
commendation. 

The  readers  of  Walpole's  histories  may  easily  detect  in 
them  a  treatment  not  possible  from  a  mere  closet  student 


SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE  165 

of  books  and  manuscripts. "  A  knowledge  of  the  science  of 
government  and  of  practical  politics  is  there.  For  Walpole 
was  of  a  political  family.  He  was  of  the  same  house  as  the 
great  Whig  Prime  Minister,  Sir  Robert ;  and  his  father  was 
Home  Secretary  in  the  Lord  Derby  ministry  of  1858,  and 
again  in  1866,  when  he  had  to  deal  with  the  famous  Hyde 
Park  meeting  of  July  23.  On  his  mother 's  side  he  was  a 
grandson  of  Spencer  Perceval,  the  Prime  Minister  who  in 
1812  was  assassinated  in  the  lobby  of  the  House  of  Com 
mons.  Walpole's  earliest  publication  was  a  biography  of 
Perceval. 

And  Spencer  Walpole  himself  was  a  man  of  affairs.  A  clerk 
in  the  War  Office  in  1858,  private  secretary  to  his  father  in 
1866,  next  year  Inspector  of  Fisheries,  later  Lieutenant- 
Governor  of  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  from  1893  to  1899  Secre 
tary  to  the  Post-office.  In  spite  of  all  this  administrative 
work  his  books  show  that  he  was  a  wide,  general  reader, 
apart  from  his  special  historical  studies.  He  wrote  in  an 
agreeable  literary  style,  with  Macaulay  undoubtedly  as  his 
model,  although  he  was  by  no  means  a  slavish  imitator. 
His  " History  of  Twenty-five  Years"  seems  to  me  to  be 
written  with  a  freer  hand  than  the  earlier  history.  He  is 
here  animated  by  the  spirit  rather  than  the  letter  of  Macau- 
lay.  I  no  longer  noticed  certain  tricks  of  expression  which 
one  catches  so  easily  in  a  study  of  the  great  historian,  and 
which  seem  so  well  to  suit  Macaulay's  own  work,  but  nobody 
else's. 

An  article  by  Walpole  on  my  first  four  volumes,  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review  of  January,  1901,  led  to  a  correspond 
ence  which  resulted  in  my  receiving  an  invitation  last  May 
to  pass  Sunday  with  him  at  Hartfield  Grove,  his  Sussex 
country  place.  We  were  to  meet  at  Victoria  station  and 
take  an  early  morning  train.  Seeing  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 


166  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  day  previous,  I  asked  for  a  personal  description  of  his 
friend  Walpole  in  order  that  I  might  easily  recognize  him. 
"Well,"  says  Harrison,  "perhaps  I  can  guide  you.  A 
while  ago  I  sat  next  to  a  lady  during  a  dinner  who  took  me 
for  Walpole  and  never  discovered  her  mistake  until,  when  she 
addressed  me  as  Sir  Spencer,  I  undeceived  her  just  as  the 
ladies  were  retiring  from  the  table.  Now  I  am  the  elder  by 
eight  years  and  I  don't  think  I  look  like  Walpole,  but  that 
good  lady  had  another  opinion."  Walpole  and  Harrison 
met  that  Saturday  evening  at  the  Academy  dinner,  and 
Walpole  obtained  a  personal  description  of  myself.  This 
caution  on  both  our  parts  was  unnecessary.  We  were  the 
only  historians  traveling  down  on  the  train  and  could  not 
possibly  have  missed  one  another.  I  found  him  a  thor 
oughly  genial  man,  and  after  fifteen  minutes  in  the  railway 
carriage  we  were  well  acquainted.  The  preface  to  his 
"History  of  Twenty-five  Years"  told  that  the  two  volumes 
were  the  work  of  five  years.  I  asked  him  how  he  was  getting 
on  with  the  succeeding  volumes.  He  replied  that  he  had 
done  a  good  deal  of  work  on  them,  and  now  that  he  was  no 
longer  in  an  administrative  position  he  could  concentrate 
his  efforts,  and  he  expected  to  have  the  work  finished  before 
long.  I  inquired  if  the  prominence  of  his  family  in  politics 
hampered  him  at  all  in  writing  so  nearly  contemporary 
history,  and  he  said,  "Not  a  bit."  An  hour  of  the  railroad 
and  a  half-hour's  drive  brought  us  to  his  home.  It  was  not 
an  ancestral  place,  but  a  purchase  not  many  years  back. 
An  old  house  had  been  remodeled  with  modern  improve 
ments,  and  comfort  and  ease  were  the  predominant  aspects. 
Sir  Spencer  proposed  a  "turn"  before  luncheon,  which 
meant  a  short  walk,  and  after  luncheon  we  had  a  real  walk. 
I  am  aware  that  the  English  mile  and  our  own  are  alike 
5280  feet,  but  I  am  always  impressed  with  the  fact  that 


SIR  SPENCER  WALPOLE  167 

the  English  mile  seems  longer,  and  so  I  was  on  this  Sunday. 
For  after  a  good  two  hours'  exertion  over  hills  and  meadows 
my  host  told  me  that  we  had  gone  only  five  miles.  Only  by 
direct  question  did  I  elicit  the  fact  that  had  he  been  alone  he 
would  have  done  seven  miles  in  the  same  time. 

There  were  no  other  guests,  and  Lady  Walpole,  Sir  Spen 
cer,  and  I  had  all  of  the  conversation  at  luncheon  and  din 
ner  and  during  the  evening.  We  talked  about  history  and 
literature,  English  and  American  politics,  and  public  men. 
He  was  singularly  well  informed  about  our  country,  although 
he  had  only  made  one  brief  visit  and  then  in  an  official  ca 
pacity.  English  expressions  of  friendship  are  now  so  common 
that  I  will  not  quote  even  one  of  the  many  scattered  through 
his  volumes,  but  he  displayed  everywhere  a  candid  apprecia 
tion  of  our  good  traits  and  creditable  doings.  I  was  struck 
with  his  knowledge  and  love  of  lyric  poetry.  Byron,  Shel 
ley,  Keats,  Tennyson,  Longfellow,  and  Lowell  were  thor 
oughly  familiar  to  him.  He  would  repeat  some  favorite 
passage  of  Keats,  and  at  once  turn  to  a  discussion  of  the 
administrative  details  of  his  work  in  the  post-office.  Of 
course  the  day  and  evening  passed  very  quickly,  —  it  was 
one  of  the  days  to  be  marked  with  a  white  stone,  —  and 
when  I  bade  Walpole  good-by  on  the  Monday  morning  I 
felt  as  if  I  were  parting  from  a  warm  friend.  I  found  him 
broad-minded,  intelligent,  sympathetic,  affable,  and  he 
seemed  as  strong  physically  as  he  was  sound  intellectually. 
His  death  on  Sunday,  July  7,  of  cerebral  hemorrhage  was 
alike  a  shock  and  a  grief. 


JOHN   RICHARD   GREEN 

Address  at  a  gathering  of  historians  on  June  5, 1909,  to  mark  the 
placing  of  a  tablet  in  the  inner  quadrangle  of  Jesus  College, 
Oxford,  to  the  memory  of  John  Richard  Green. 


JOHN  RICHARD  GREEN 

I  WISH  indeed  that  I  had  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels 
to  express  the  admiration  of  the  reading  public  of  America 
for  the  History  of  John  Richard  Green.  I  suppose  that  he 
has  had  more  readers  in  our  country  than  any  other  historian 
except  Macaulay,  and  he  has  shaped  the  opinions  of  men  who 
read,  more  than  any  writers  of  history  except  those  whom 
John  Morley  called  the  great  born  men  of  letters,  —  Gibbon, 
Macaulay,  and  Carlyle. 

I  think  it  is  the  earlier  volumes  rather  than  the  last  volume 
of  his  more  extended  work  which  have  taken  hold  of  us.  Of 
course  we  thrill  at  his  tribute  to  Washington,  where  he  has 
summed  up  our  reverence,  trust,  and  faith  in  him  in  one 
single  sentence  which  shows  true  appreciation  and  deep 
feeling;  and  it  flatters  our  national  vanity,  of  which  we 
have  a  goodly  stock,  to  read  in  his  fourth  volume  that  the 
creation  of  the  United  States  was  one  of  the  turning  points 
in  the  history  of  the  world. 

No  saying  is  more  trite,  at  any  rate  to  an  educated  Amer 
ican  audience,  than  that  the  development  of  the  English 
nation  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  things,  if  not  the  most 
wonderful  thing,  which  history  records.  That  history  be 
fore  James  I  is  our  own,  and,  to  our  general  readers,  it  has 
never  been  so  well  presented  as  in  Green's  first  two  volumes. 
The  victories  of  war  are  our  own.  It  was  our  ancestors 
who  preserved  liberty,  maintained  order,  set  the  train  mov 
ing  toward  religious  toleration,  and  wrought  out  that  lan 
guage  and  literature  which  we  are  proud  of,  as  well 
as  you. 

171 


172  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

For  my  own  part,  I  should  not  have  liked  to  miss  reading 
and  re-reading  the  five  chapters  on  Elizabeth  in  the  second 
volume.  What  eloquence  in  simply  the  title  of  the  last,  — 
The  England  of  Shakespeare !  And  in  fact  my  conception 
of  Elizabeth,  derived  from  Shakespeare,  is  confirmed  by 
Green.  As  I  tkink  how  much  was  at  stake  in  the  last  half 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  how  well  the  troubles  were  met 
by  that  great  monarch  and  the  wise  statesman  whom  she 
called  to  her  aid,  I  fee1  that  we  could  not  be  what  we  are, 
had  a  weak,  irresolute  sovereign  been  at  the  head  of  the 
state. 

With  the  power  of  a  master  Green  manifests  what  was 
accomplished.  At  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  —  "Never" 
so  he  wrote  —  "had  the  fortunes  of  England  sunk  to  a 
lower  ebb.  The  loss  of  Calais  gave  France  the  mastery 
of  the  Channel.  The  French  King  in  fact  '  bestrode  the 
realm,  having  one  foot  in  Calais,  and  the  other  in  Scot 
land.'  " 

And  at  the  death  of  Elizabeth,  thus  Green  tells  the  story : 
"The  danger  which  had  hitherto  threatened  our  national 
existence  and  our  national  unity  had  disappeared:  France 
clung  to  the  friendship  of  England,  Spain  trembled  beneath 
its  blows." 

With  the  wide  range  of  years  of  his  subject,  with  a  grasp 
of  an  extended  period  akin  to  Gibbon's,  complete  accuracy 
was,  of  course,  not  attainable,  but  Samuel  R.  Gardiner  once 
told  me  that  Green,  although  sometimes  inaccurate  in  de 
tails,  gave  a  general  impression  that  was  justifiable  and 
correct;  and  that  is  in  substance  the  published  opinion  of 
Stubbs. 

Goethe  said  that  in  reading  Molidre  you  perceive  that  he 
possessed  the  charm  of  an  amiable  nature  in  habitual  contact 
with  good  society.  So  we,  who  had  not  the  advantage  of 


JOHN  RICHARD  GREEN  173 

personal  intercourse,  divined  was  the  case  of  Green;  and 
when  the  volume  of  Letters  appeared,  we  saw  that  we  had 
guessed  correctly.  But  not  until  then  did  we  know  of  his 
devotion  to  his  work,  and  his  heroic  struggle,  which  renders 
the  story  of  his  short  and  brilliant  career  a  touching  and  fas 
cinating  biography  of  a  historian  who  made  his  mark  upon 
his  time. 


EDWARD  L.  PIERCE 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical   Society  at  the 
October  meeting  of  1897. 


EDWARD  L.  PIERCE 

I  SHALL  first  speak  of  Mr.  Pierce  as  an  author.  His  Life 
of  Sumner  it  seems  to  me  is  an  excellent  biography,  and 
the  third  and  fourth  volumes  of  it  are  an  important  con 
tribution  to  the  history  of  our  country.  Any  one  who  has 
gone  through  the  original  material  of  the  period  he  embraces 
must  be  struck  not  only  with  the  picture  of  Sumner,  but 
with  the  skill  of  the  biographer  in  the  use  of  his  data  to  pre 
sent  a  general  historical  view.  The  injunction  of  Cicero, 
"  Choose  with  discretion  out  of  the  plenty  that  lies  before 
you,"  Mr.  Pierce  observed.  To  those  who  know  how  ex 
tensive  was  his  reading  of  books,  letters,  newspaper  files, 
how  much  he  had  conversed  with  the  actors  in  those  stirring 
scenes  —  and  who  will  take  into  account  the  mass  of  mem 
ories  that  crowd  upon  the  mind  of  one  who  has  lived  through 
such  an  era  —  this  biography  will  seem  not  too  long  but 
rather  admirable  in  its  relative  brevity.  In  a  talk  that  I  had 
with  Mr.  Pierce  I  referred  to  the  notice  in  an  English  literary 
weekly  of  his  third  and  fourth  volumes  which  maintained 
that  the  biography  was  twice  too  long,  and  I  took  occasion 
to  say  that  in  comparison  with  other  American  works  of 
the  kind  the  criticism  seemed  unjust.  " Moreover,"  I  went 
on,  "I  think  you  showed  restraint  in  not  making  use  of  much 
of  your  valuable  material,  —  of  the  interesting  and  even 
important  unprinted  letters  of  Cobden,  the  Duke  of  Argyll, 
and  of  John  Bright."  "Yes,"  replied  Mr.  Pierce,  with  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye,  "I  can  say  with  Lord  Clive,  l Great 
Heavens,  at  this  moment  I  stand  astonished  at  my  own 
moderation.'  " 

N  177 


178  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Any  one  who  has  studied  public  sentiment  in  this  country 
for  any  period  knows  how  easy  it  is  to  generalize  from  a  few 
facts,  and  yet,  if  the  subject  be  more  thoroughly  investi 
gated,  it  becomes  apparent  how  unsatisfactory  such  gener 
alizations  are  apt  to  be;  not  that  they  are  essentially  un 
true,  but  rather  because  they  express  only  a  part  of  the  truth. 
If  a  student  should  ask  me  in  what  one  book  he  would  find 
the  best  statement  of  popular  opinion  at  the  North  during 
the  Civil  War,  I  should  say,  Read  Suinner's  letters  as  cited 
in  Mr.  Pierce's  biography  with  the  author's  comments. 
The  speeches  of  Sumner  may  smell  too  much  of  the  lamp 
to  be  admirable,  but  the  off-hand  letters  written  to  his  Eng 
lish  and  to  a  few  American  friends  during  our  great  struggle 
are  worthy  of  the  highest  esteem.  From  his  conversations 
with  the  President,  the  Cabinet  ministers,  his  fellow-sena 
tors  and  congressmen,  his  newspaper  reading,  —  in  short, 
from  the  many  impressions  that  go  to  make  up  the  daily 
life  of  an  influential  public  man,  —  there  has  resulted  an 
accurate  statement  of  the  popular  feeling  from  day  to  day. 
In  spite  of  his  intense  desire  to  have  Englishmen  of  power 
and  position  espouse  the  right  side,  he  would  not  misrepre 
sent  anything  by  the  suppression  of  facts,  any  more  than  he 
would  make  a  misleading  statement.  In  the  selection  of 
these  letters  Mr.  Pierce  has  shown  a  nice  discrimination. 

Sumner,  whom  I  take  to  have  been  one  of  the  most  truth 
ful  of  men,  was  fortunate  in  having  one  of  the  most  honest 
of  biographers.  Mr.  Pierce  would  not,  I  think,  have  wit 
tingly  suppressed  anything  that  told  against  him.  I  love 
to  think  of  one  citation  which  would  never  have  been  made 
by  an  idolizing  biographer,  so  sharply  did  it  bring  out  the 
folly  of  the  opinion  expressed.  Sumner  wrote,  May  3,  1863 : 
"  There  is  no  doubt  here  about  Hooker.  He  told  Judge 
Bates  .  .  .  that  he  'did  not  mean  to  drive  the  enemy  but 


EDWARD  L.  PIERCE  179 

to  bag  him.'  It  is  thought  he  is  now  doing  it."  The  biog 
rapher's  comment  is  brief,  "The  letter  was  written  on  the 
day  of  Hooker 's  defeat  at  Chancellors ville." 

It  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Pierce  was  as  impartial  in  his 
writing  as  is  possible  for  a  man  who  has  taken  an  active  part 
in  political  affairs,  who  is  thoroughly  in  earnest,  and  who  has 
a  positive  manner  of  expression.  It  is  not  so  difficult  as 
some  imagine  for  a  student  of  history  whose  work  is  done  in 
the  library  to  be  impartial,  provided  he  has  inherited  or  ac 
quired  the  desire  to  be  fair  and  honest,  and  provided  he  has 
the  diligence  and  patience  to  go  through  the  mass  of  evi 
dence.  His  historical  material  will  show  him  that  to  every 
question  there  are  two  sides.  But  what  of  the  man  who  has 
been  in  the  heat  of  the  conflict,  and  who,  when  the  fight  was 
on,  believed  with  Sumner  that  there  was  no  other  side? 
If  such  a  man  displays  candor,  how  much  greater  his  merit 
than  the  impartiality  of  the  scholar  who  shuns  political 
activity  and  has  given  himself  up  to  a  life  of  speculation ! 

I  had  the  good  fortune  to  have  three  long  conversations 
with  the  Hon.  Robert  C.  Winthrop,  the  last  of  which  oc 
curred  shortly  after  the  publication  of  the  third  and  fourth  vol 
umes  of  the  Life  of  Sumner.  "What,"  said  Mr.  Winthrop 
to  me,  "do  you  think  of  the  chapter  on  the  Annexation  of 
Texas  and  the  Mexican  War?"  "I  think,"  was  my  reply, 
"that  Mr.  Pierce  has  treated  a  delicate  subject  like  a  gen 
tleman."  "From  what  I  have  heard  of  it,"  responded  Mr. 
Winthrop,  earnestly,  "and  from  so  much  as  I  have  read  of  it, 
that  is  also  my  own  opinion."  Such  a  private  conversation 
I  could,  of  course,  repeat,  and,  somewhat  later  the  occasion 
presenting  itself,  I  did  so  to  Mr.  Pierce.  "That  is  more 
grateful  to  me,"  he  said,  almost  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  "than 
all  the  praise  I  have  received  for  these  volumes." 

Mr.  Pierce  had,  I  think,  the  historic  sense.     I  consulted 


180  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

him  several  times  on  the  treatment  of  historical  matters, 
taking  care  not  to  trench  on  questions  where,  so  different 
was  our  point  of  view,  we  could  not  possibly  agree,  and  I 
always  received  from  him  advice  that  was  suggestive,  even 
if  I  did  not  always  follow  it  to  the  letter.  I  sent  to  him, 
while  he  was  in  London,  my  account  of  Secretary  Cameron's 
report  proposing  to  arm  the  slaves  and  of  his  removal  from 
office  by  President  Lincoln.  Mr.  Pierce  thought  my  in 
ferences  were  far-fetched,  and  wrote:  "I  prefer  the  natural 
explanation.  Horace  says  we  must  not  introduce  a  god 
into  a  play  unless  it  is  necessary.7' 

As  a  friend,  he  was  warm-hearted  and  true.  He  brought 
cheer  and  animation  into  your  house.  His  talk  was  fresh ; 
his  zeal  for  whatever  was  uppermost  in  his  mind  was  con 
tagious,  and  he  inspired  you  with  enthusiasm.  He  was  not 
good  at  conversation,  in  the  French  sense  of  the  term,  for 
he  was  given  to  monologue;  but  he  was  never  dull.  His 
artlessness  was  charming.  He  gave  you  confidences  that 
you  would  have  shrunk  from  hearing  out  of  the  mouth  of  any 
other  man,  in  the  fear  that  you  intruded  on  a  privacy  where 
you  had  no  right ;  but  this  openness  of  mind  was  so  natural 
in  Mr.  Pierce  that  you  listened  with  concern  and  sympa 
thized  warmly.  He  took  interest  in  everything ;  he  had  in 
finite  resources,  and  until  his  health  began  to  fail,  enjoyed 
life  thoroughly.  He  loved  society,  conversation,  travel; 
and  while  he  had  no  passion  for  books,  he  listened  to  you 
attentively  while  you  gave  an  abstract  or  criticism  of  some 
book  that  was  attracting  attention.  In  all  intercourse  with 
him  you  felt  that  you  were  in  a  healthy  moral  atmosphere. 
I  never  knew  a  man  who  went  out  of  his  way  oftener  to  do 
good  works  in  which  there  was  absolutely  no  reward,  and 
at  a  great  sacrifice  of  his  time  —  to  him  a  most  precious 
commodity.  He  was  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word  a  philan- 


EDWARD  L.  PIERCE  181 

thropist,  and  yet  no  one  would  have  approved  more  heartily 
than  he  this  remark  of  Emerson:  "The  professed  philan 
thropists  are  an  altogether  odious  set  of  people,  whom  one 
would  shun  as  the  worst  of  bores  and  canters." 

His  interest  in  this  Society  the  published  Proceedings  will 
show  in  some  measure,  but  they  cannot  reflect  the  tone  of 
devotion  in  which  he  spoke  of  it  in  conversation,  or  exhibit 
his  loyalty  to  it  as  set  forth  in  the  personal  letter.  It  was 
a  real  privation  that  his  legislative  duties  prevented  his 
attending  these  meetings  last  winter. 

Of  Mr.  Pierce  as  a  citizen  most  of  you,  gentlemen,  can 
speak  better  than  I,  but  it  does  appear  to  me  an  instance  of 
rare  civic  virtue  that  a  man  of  his  age,  political  experience, 
ability,  and  mental  resources  could  take  pride  and  pleasure 
in  his  service  in  the  House  of  Representatives  of  his  Com 
monwealth.  He  was  sixty-eight  years  old,  suffering  from 
disease,  yet  in  his  service  last  winter  he  did  not  miss  one 
legislative  session  nor  a  day  meeting  of  his  committee.  His 
love  for  his  town  was  a  mark  of  local  attachment  both 
praiseworthy  and  useful.  "I  would  rather  be  moderator 
of  the  Milton  town-meeting,"  he  said,  "than  hold  any  other 
office  in  the  United  States." 


JACOB  D.  COX 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical   Society  at  the 
October  meeting  of  1900. 


JACOB  D.  COX 

A  USEFUL  member  of  the  legislature  of  his  state,  a  general 
in  the  army  during  the  Civil  War,  governor  of  his  state, 
Secretary  of  the  Interior  in  President  Grant's  Cabinet,  a 
member  of  Congress,  the  president  of  a  large  railroad, 
a  writer  of  books,  dean  and  teacher  in  a  law  school,  and  a 
reviewer  of  books  in  the  Nation,  —  such  were  the  varied 
activities  of  General  Cox.  All  this  work  was  done  with 
credit.  He  bore  a  prominent  part  in  the  battle  of  Antietam, 
where  Ropes  speaks  of  his  " brilliant  success";  he  was  the 
second  in  command  at  the  battle  of  Franklin,  and  bore  the 
brunt  of  the  battle.  " Brigadier-General  J.  D.  Cox,"  wrote 
Schofield,  the  commanding  general,  in  his  report,  "  deserves 
a  very  large  share  of  credit  for  the  brilliant  victory  at 
Franklin." 

The  governor  of  the  state  of  Ohio  did  not  then  have  a 
great  opportunity  of  impressing  himself  upon  the  minds  of 
the  people  of  his  state,  but  Cox  made  his  mark  in  the  canvass 
for  that  office.  We  must  call  to  mind  that  in  the  year  1865, 
when  he  was  the  Republican  candidate  for  governor,  Presi 
dent  Johnson  had  initiated  his  policy  of  reconstruction,  but 
had  not  yet  made  a  formal  break  with  his  party.  Negro 
suffrage,  which  only  a  few  had  favored  during  the  last  year 
of  the  war,  was  now  advocated  by  the  radical  Republicans, 
and  the  popular  sentiment  of  the  party  was  tending  in  that 
direction.  Cox  had  been  a  strong  antislavery  man  before 
the  war,  a  supporter  of  President  Lincoln  in  his  emancipa 
tion  measures,  but  soon  after  his  nomination  for  governor  he 
wrote  a  letter  to  his  radical  friends  at  Oberlin  in  opposition 

185 


186  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

to  negro  suffrage.  "You  assume,"  he  said,  "that  the  ex 
tension  of  the  right  of  suffrage  to  the  blacks,  leaving  them 
intermixed  with  the  whites,  will  cure  all  the  trouble.  I 
believe  it  would  rather  be  like  the  decision  in  that  outer 
darkness  of  which  Milton  speaks  where 

" '  chaos  umpire  sits, 
And  by  decision  more  embroils  the  fray/  " 

While  governor,  he  said  in  a  private  conversation  that  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  "that  so  large  bodies  of  black 
men  and  white  as  were  in  presence  in  the  Southern  States 
never  could  share  political  power,  and  that  the  insistence 
upon  it  on  the  part  of  the  colored  people  would  lead  to  their 


ruin." 


President  Grant  appointed  General  Cox  Secretary  of  the 
Interior,  and  he  remained  for  nearly  two  years  in  the 
Cabinet.  James  Russell  Lowell,  on  a  visit  to  Washington 
in  1870,  gave  expression  to  the  feeling  among  independent 
Republicans.  "Judge  Hoar,"  he  wrote,  "and  Mr.  Cox 
struck  me  as  the  only  really  strong  men  in  the  Cabinet." 
This  was  long  before  the  Civil  Service  Reform  Act  had  passed 
Congress,  but  Secretary  Cox  put  the  Interior  Department 
on  a  merit  basis,  and  he  was  ever  afterwards  an  advocate  of 
civil  service  reform  by  word  of  mouth  and  with  his  pen. 
Differences  with  the  President,  in  which  I  feel  pretty  sure 
that  the  Secretary  was  in  the  right,  caused  him  to  resign 
the  office. 

Elected  to  Congress  in  1876,  he  was  a  useful  member  for 
one  term.  He  has  always  been  known  to  men  in  public  life, 
and  when  President  McKinley  offered  him  the  position  of 
Minister  to  Spain  something  over  three  years  ago,  it  was  felt 
that  a  well-known  and  capable  man  had  been  selected.  For 
various  reasons  he  did  not  accept  the  appointment,  but  if  he 


JACOB  D.  COX  187 

had  done  so,  no  one  could  doubt  that  he  would  have  shown 
tact  and  judgment  in  the  difficult  position. 

As  president  of  the  Wabash  Railroad,  one  of  the  large 
railroads  in  the  West,  he  gained  a  name  among  business 
men,  and  five  or  six  years  ago  was  offered  the  place  of  Rail 
road  Commissioner  in  New  York  City.  This  was  practically 
the  position  of  arbitrator  between  the  trunk  lines,  but  he 
was  then  Dean  of  the  Cincinnati  Law  School  and  interested 
in  a  work  which  he  did  not  care  to  relinquish. 

Besides  a  controversial  monograph,  he  wrote  three  books 
on  military  campaigns:  "Atlanta";  "The  March  to  the 
Sea;  Franklin  and  Nashville ";  "The  Battle  of  Franklin"; 
and  he  wrote  four  excellent  chapters  for  Force's  "Life  of 
General  Sherman."  In  these  he  showed  qualities  of  a  mili 
tary  historian  of  a  high  order.  Before  his  death  he  had 
finished  his  Reminiscences,  which  will  be  brought  out  by 
the  Scribners  this  autumn. 

His  differences  with  President  Grant  while  in  his  Cabinet 
left  a  wound,  and  in  private  conversation  he  was  quite  severe 
in  his  strictures  of  many  of  the  President's  acts,  but  he  never 
let  this  feeling  influence  him  in  the  slightest  degree  in  the 
consideration  of  Grant  the  General.  He  had  a  very  high 
idea  of  Grant's  military  talents,  which  he  has  in  many  ways 
emphatically  stated. 

Since  1874  he  had  been  a  constant  contributor  to  the 
literary  department  of  the  Nation.  In  his  book  reviews 
he  showed  a  fine  critical  faculty  and  large  general  informa 
tion,  and  some  of  his  obituary  notices  —  especially  those  of 
Generals  Buell,  Grant,  Sherman,  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  and 
Jefferson  Davis  —  showed  that  power  of  impartial  character 
ization  which  is  so  great  a  merit  in  a  historian.  He  was 
an  omnivorous  reader  of  serious  books.  It  was  difficult  to 
name  any  noteworthy  work  of  history  or  biography  or  any 


188  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

popular  book  on  natural  science  with  which  he  was  not 
acquainted. 

As  I  saw  him  two  years  ago,  when  he  was  seventy  years 
old,  he  was  in  the  best  of  health  and  vigor,  which  seemed  to 
promise  many  years  of  life.  He  was  tall,  erect,  with  a  frame 
denoting  great  physical  strength,  and  he  had  distinctively 
a  military  bearing.  He  was  an  agreeable  companion,  an  ex 
cellent  talker,  a  scrupulously  honest  and  truthful  man,  and 
a  gentleman. 


EDWARD  GAYLOKD  BOURNE 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
March  meeting  of  1908. 


EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE 

WHEN  an  associate  dies  who  was  not  yet  forty-eight  years 
old,  whom  most  of  us  knew  as  a  strong  enduring  man,  who 
was  capable  of  an  immense  amount  of  intellectual  work,  it 
is  a  real  calamity,  —  a  calamity  which  in  this  case  History 
mourns,  as  Edward  Gaylord  Bourne  was  an  excellent  teacher 
and  a  thorough  historical  scholar.  The  physical  details  of 
any  illness  are  apt  to  be  repulsive,  but  the  malady  in  Bourne's 
case  was  somehow  so  bound  up  in  his  life  that  an  inquiry 
into  it  comes  from  no  morbid  curiosity.  When  ten  years 
old  he  was  attacked  with  tubercular  disease  of  the  hip,  and 
for  some  weeks  his  life  was  despaired  of ;  but  he  was  saved 
by  the  loving  care  of  his  parents,  receiving  particular  devo 
tion  from  his  father,  who  was  a  Congregational  minister  in 
charge  of  a  parish  in  Connecticut.  As  the  left  leg  had  out 
grown  the  other,  Bourne  was  obliged  to  use  crutches  for 
three  years,  when  his  father  took  him  to  a  specialist  in  Bos 
ton,  and  the  result  was  that  he  was  able  to  abandon  crutches 
and  in  the  end  to  get  about  by  an  appliance  to  adjust  the 
lengths  of  the  different  legs,  such  as  his  friends  were  familiar 
with.  Despite  this  disability  he  developed  great  physical 
strength,  especially  in  the  chest  and  arms,  but  his  lame 
ness  prevented  his  accompanying  his  college  companions  on 
long  tramps,  so  that  the  bicycle  was  for  him  a  most  welcome 
invention.  He  became  expert  in  the  use  of  it,  riding  on  it 
down  Pike's  Peak  at  the  time  of  his  visit  to  Colorado ;  and 
he  performed  a  similar  feat  of  endurance  on  another  occasion 
when  stopping  with  me  at  Jefferson  in  the  White  Mountains. 
Starting  early  in  the  morning,  he  traveled  by  rail  to  the 

191 


192  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

terminus  of  the  mountain  railroad,  went  up  Mount  Washing 
ton  on  the  railroad,  and  rode  down  the  carriage  road  on  his 
wheel  to  the  Glen  House,  which  ought  to  have  been  enough 
of  fatigue  and  exertion  for  one  day,  but  he  then  had  about 
ten  miles  to  make  on  his  bicycle  over  a  somewhat  rough 
mountain  road  to  reach  Jefferson.  Jefferson  he  did  make, 
but  not  until  after  midnight. 

During  an  acquaintance  of  over  nineteen  years  with 
Bourne,  I  was  always  impressed  with  his  physical  strength 
and  endurance;  and  I  was  therefore  much  surprised  to 
learn,  in  a  letter  received  from  him  last  winter  while  I  was 
in  Rome,  that  his  youthful  malady  had  attacked  him,  that 
he  was  again  on  crutches  and  had  been  obliged  to  give  up 
his  work  at  Yale.  In  truth  ever  since  the  autumn  of  1906 
he  has  had  a  painful,  hopeless  struggle.  He  has  had  the 
benefit  of  all  the  resources  of  medicine  and  surgery,  and  he 
and  his  wife  were  buoyed  up  by  hope  until  the  last ;  but  as 
the  sequel  of  one  of  a  series  of  operations  death  came  to  his 
relief  on  February  24. 

Only  less  remarkable  than  his  struggle  for  life  and  physical 
strength  was  his  energy  in  acquiring  an  education.  The 
sacrifices  that  parents  in  New  England  and  the  rest  of  the 
country  make  in  order  to  send  their  boys  to  school  and  col 
lege  is  a  common  enough  circumstance,  but  not  always  is  the 
return  so  satisfactory  as  it  was  in  the  case  of  Edward  Bourne, 
and  his  brother.  Edward  went  to  the  Norwich  Academy, 
where  his  studious  disposition  and  diligent  purpose  gained 
him  the  favor  of  the  principal.  Thence  to  Yale,  where  he 
attracted  the  attention  of  Professor  William  G.  Sumner, 
who  became  to  him  a  guide  and  a  friend.  Until  his  senior 
year  at  Yale  his  favorite  studies  were  Latin  and  Greek ;  and 
his  brother,  who  was  in  his  class,  informs  me  that  ever  since 
his  preparatory  school  days,  it  was  his  custom  to  read  the 


EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE  193 

whole  of  any  author  in  hand  as  well  as  the  part  set  for  the 
class.  During  recitations  he  recalls  seeing  him  again  and 
again  reading  ahead  in  additional  books  of  the  author,  keep 
ing  at  the  same  time  "a  ringer  on  the  page  where  the  class 
was  translating,  in  order  not  to  be  caught  off  his  guard. " 
In  his  senior  year  at  Yale,  under  the  influence  of  Professor 
Sumner,  he  became  interested  in  economics  and  won  the 
Cobden  medal.  After  graduation  he  wrote  his  first  histori 
cal  book,  "The  History  of  the  Surplus  Revenue  of  1837," 
published  in  1885  in  Putnam's  " Questions  of  the  Day" 
series.  For  this  and  his  other  graduate  work  his  university 
later  conferred  upon  him  the  degree  of  Ph.D.  Since  I 
have  learned  the  story  of  his  boyhood  and  youth,  it  is  with 
peculiar  appreciation  that  I  read  the  dedication  of  this  first 
book:  "To  my  Father  and  Mother."  I  may  add  in  this 
connection  that  while  pursuing  his  indefatigable  labors  for 
the  support  of  his  large  family,  his  father's  sickness  and 
death  overtaxed  his  strength,  and  the  breakdown  followed. 

At  Yale  during  his  graduate  work  he  won  the  Foote 
scholarship;  he  was  instructor  in  history  there  from  1886 
to  1888,  then  took  a  similar  position  at  Adelbert  College, 
Cleveland,  becoming  Professor  of  History  in  1890.  This 
post  he  held  until  1895,  when  he  was  called  to  Yale  Uni 
versity  as  Professor  of  History,  a  position  that  he  held  at 
the  time  of  his  death. 

Besides  the  doctor's  thesis,  Bourne  published  two  books, 
the  first  of  which  was  "Essays  in  Historical  Criticism,"  one 
of  the  Yale  bicentennial  publications,  the  most  notable 
essay  in  which  is  that  on  Marcus  Whitman.  A  paper  read 
at  the  Ann  Arbor  session  of  the  American  Historical  meeting 
in  Detroit  and  later  published  in  the  American  Historical 
Review  is  here  amplified  into  a  long  and  exhaustive  treat 
ment  of  the  subject.  The  original  paper  gained  Bourne 


194  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

some  celebrity  and  subjected  him  to  some  harsh  criticism, 
both  of  which,  I  think,  he  thoroughly  enjoyed.  Feeling 
sure  of  his  facts  and  ground,  he  delighted  in  his  final  word 
to  support  the  contention  which  he  had  read  with  emphasis 
and  pleasure  to  an  attentive  audience  in  one  of  the  halls  of 
the  University  of  Michigan.  The  final  paragraph  sums  up 
what  he  set  out  to  prove  with  undoubted  success : 

That  Marcus  Whitman  was  a  devoted  and  heroic  missionary 
who  braved  every  hardship  and  imperilled  his  life  for  the  cause  of 
Christian  missions  and  Christian  civilization  in  the  far  Northwest 
and  finally  died  at  his  post,  a  sacrifice  to  the  cause,  will  not  be 
gainsaid.  That  he  deserves  grateful  commemoration  in  Oregon 
and  Washington  is  beyond  dispute.  But  that  he  is  a  national 
figure  in  American  history,  or  that  he  "saved"  Oregon,  must  be 
rejected  as  a  fiction  [p.  100]. 

Bourne  had  a  good  knowledge  of  American  history,  and 
he  specialized  on  the  Discoveries  period,  to  which  he  gave 
close  and  continuous  attention.  He  was  indebted  to  Pro 
fessor  Hart's  ambitious  and  excellent  cooperative  history, 
"The  American  Nation,"  for  the  opportunity  to  obtain  a 
hearing  on  his  favorite  subject.  His  "Spain  in  America," 
his  third  published  book,  is  the  book  of  a  scholar.  While 
the  conditions  of  his  narrative  allowed  only  forty-six  pages 
to  the  story  of  Columbus,  he  had  undoubtedly  material 
enough  well  arranged  and  digested  to  fill  the  volume  on  this 
topic  alone.  I  desire  to  quote  a  signal  example  of  com 
pression  : 

It  was  November,  1504,  when  Columbus  arrived  in  Seville,  a 
broken  man,  something  over  twelve  years  from  the  time  he  first 
set  sail  from  Palos.  Each  successive  voyage  since  his  first  had 
left  him  at  a  lower  point.  On  his  return  from  the  second  he  was 
on  the  defensive;  after  his  third  he  was  deprived  of  his  viceroyalty; 
on  his  fourth  he  was  shipwrecked.  .  .  .  The  last  blow,  the  death 
of  his  patron  Isabella,  soon  followed.  It  was  months  before  he  was 


EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE  195 

able  to  attend  court.  His  strength  gradually  failed,  he  sank 
from  public  view,  and  on  the  eve  of  Ascension  Day,  May  20,  1506, 
he  passed  away  in  obscurity  [p.  81]. 

And  I  am  very  fond  of  this  final  characterization : 

Columbus  .  .  .  has  revealed  himself  in  his  writings  as  few  men 
of  action  have  been  revealed.  His  hopes,  his  illusions,  his  vanity, 
and  love  of  money,  his  devotion  to  by-gone  ideals,  his  keen  and 
sensitive  observation  of  the  natural  world,  his  credulity  and  utter 
lack  of  critical  power  in  dealing  with  literary  evidence,  his  practical 
abilities  as  a  navigator,  his  tenacity  of  purpose  and  boldness  of 
execution,  his  lack  of  fidelity  as  a  husband  and  a  lover,  ...  all 
stand  out  in  clear  relief.  ...  Of  all  the  self-made  men  that 
America  has  produced,  none  has  had  a  more  dazzling  success,  a 
more  pathetic  sinking  to  obscurity,  or  achieved  a  more  universal 
celebrity  [p.  82]. 

His  chapter  on  Magellan  is  thoroughly  interesting.  The 
treatment  of  Columbus  and  Magellan  shows  what  Bourne 
might  have  achieved  in  historical  work  if  he  could  have  had 
leisure  to  select  his  own  subjects  and  elaborate  them  at  will. 

Before  " Spain  in  America"  appeared,  he  wrote  a  scholarly 
introduction  to  the  vast  work  on  the  "  Philippine  Islands " 
published  by  the  Arthur  H.  Clark  Company,  of  Cleveland, 
of  which  fifty-one  volumes  are  already  out.  The  study  of 
this  subject  gave  Bourne  a  chance  for  the  exhibition  of  his 
dry  wit  at  one  of  the  gatherings  of  the  American  Historical 
Association.  It  was  asserted  that  in  the  acquisition  of  the 
Philippine  Islands  our  country  had  violated  the  spirit  of 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  properly  confined  our  indulgence 
of  the  land  hunger  that  is  preying  upon  the  world  to  the  West 
ern  hemisphere.  Bourne  took  issue  with  this  statement.  He 
said  that  it  might  well  be  a  question  whether  the  Philippine 
Islands  did  not  belong  to  the  Western  hemisphere  and  that — 

for  the  first  three  centuries  of  their  recorded  history,  they  were  in 
a  sense  a  dependency  of  America.  As  a  dependency  of  New  Spain 


196  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

they  constituted  the  extreme  western  verge  of  the  Spanish  do 
minions  and  were  commonly  known  as  the  Western  Islands. 
When  the  sun  rose  in  Madrid  it  was  still  early  afternoon  of  the 
preceding  day  in  Manila.  Down  to  the  end  of  the  year  1844  the 
Manilan  calendar  was  reckoned  after,  that  of  Spain,  that  is,  Manila 
time  was  about  sixteen  hours  slower  than  Madrid  time. 

Bourne  undertook  to  write  the  Life  of  Motley  for 
Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Company's  American  Men  of  Letters 
series,  and  he  had  done  considerable  work  in  the  investiga 
tion  of  material.  He  was  editor  of  a  number  of  publications, 
one  of  which  was  John  Fiske's  posthumous  volume,  "New 
France  and  New  England,"  and  he  wrote  critical  notices 
for  the  Nation,  New  York  Tribune,  and  the  New  York 
Times.  As  I  have  said,  he  had  a  large  family  to  support, 
and  he  sought  work  of  the  potboiling  order;  but  in  this 
necessary  labor  he  never  sacrificed  his  ideal  of  thorough 
ness.  A  remark  that  he  made  to  me  some  while  ago  has 
come  back  with  pathetic  interest.  After  telling  me  what  he 
was  doing,  how  much  time  his  teaching  left  for  outside  work, 
why  he  did  this  and  that  because  it  brought  him  money,  he 
said :  "I  can  get  along  all  right.  I  can  support  my  family, 
educate  my  children,  and  get  a  little  needed  recreation,  if 
only  my  health  does  not  break  down." 

Bourne  took  great  interest  in  the  American  Historical 
Association,  and  rarely  if  ever  missed  an  annual  meeting. 
He  frequently  read  papers,  which  were  carefully  prepared, 
and  a  number  of  them  are  printed  in  the  volume  of  Essays 
to  which  I  have  referred.  He  was  the  efficient  chairman  of 
the  programme  committee  at  the  meeting  in  New  Haven  in 
1898;  and  as  chairman  of  an  important  committee,  or  as 
member  of  the  Council,  he  attended  the  November  dinners 
and  meetings  in  New  York,  so  that  he  came  to  be  looked 
upon  as  one  of  the  chief  supporters  of  the  Association. 


EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE  197 

Interested  also  in  the  American  Historical  Review,  he  was 
a  frequent  contributor  of  critical  book  notices. 

My  acquaintance  with  Bourne  began  in  1888,  the  year  in 
which  I  commenced  the  composition  of  my  history.  We 
were  both  living  in  Cleveland,  and,  as  it  was  his  custom  to 
dine  with  me  once  or  twice  a  month,  acquaintance  grew  into 
friendship,  and  I  came  to  have  a  great  respect  for  his  training 
and  knowledge  as  a  historical  scholar.  The  vastness  of  his 
torical  inquiry  impressed  me,  as  it  has  all  writers  of  history. 
Recognizing  in  Bourne  a  kindred  spirit,  it  occurred  to  me 
whether  I  could  not  hasten  my  work  if  he  would  employ 
part  of  his  summer  vacation  in  collecting  material.  I  im 
parted  the  idea  to  Bourne,  who  received  it  favorably,  and 
he  spent  a  month  of  the  summer  of  1889  at  work  for  me  in 
the  Boston  Athenaeum  on  my  general  specifications,  laboring 
with  industry  and  discrimination  over  the  newspapers  of 
the  early  '50's  to  which  we  had  agreed  to  confine  his  work. 
His  task  completed,  he  made  me  a  visit  of  a  few  days  at 
Bar  Harbor,  affording  an  opportunity  for  us  to  discuss  the 
period  and  his  material.  I  was  so  impressed  with  the  value 
of  his  assistance  that,  when  the  manuscript  of  my  first  two 
volumes  was  completed  in  1891,  I  asked  him  to  spend  a 
month  with  me  and  work  jointly  on  its  revision.  We  used 
to  devote  four  or  five  hours  a  day  to  this  labor,  and  in  1894, 
when  I  had  finished  my  third  volume,  we  had  a  similar  col 
laboration.1  I  have  never  known  a  better  test  of  general 
knowledge  and  intellectual  temper. 

Bourne  was  a  slow  thinker  and  worker,  but  he  was  sure, 
and,  when  he  knew  a  thing,  his  exposition  was  clear  and 
pointed.  The  chance  of  reflection  over  night  and  the 

1  Bourne  also  revised  the  manuscript  of  my  fourth  volume,  but  the  con 
ditions  did  not  admit  of  our  being  together  more  than  two  days,  and  the  re 
vision  was  not  so  satisfactory  to  either  of  us  as  that  of  the  first  three  volumes. 


198  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

occasional  discussion  at  meal  times,  outside  of  our  set  hours, 
gave  him  the  opportunity  to  recall  all  his  knowledge  bearing 
on  the  subject  in  hand,  to  digest  and  classify  it  thoroughly, 
so  that,  when  he  tackled  a  question,  he  talked,  so  to  speak, 
like  a  book.  Two  chapters  especially  attracted  him,  — 
the  one  on  Slavery  in  my  first  volume,  and  the  one  on  general 
financial  and  social  conditions  at  the  beginning  of  the  third ; 
and  I  think  that  I  may  say  that  not  only  every  paragraph 
and  sentence,  but  every  important  word  in  these  two  chap 
ters  was  discussed  and  weighed.  Bourne  was  a  good  critic, 
and,  to  set  him  entirely  at  ease,  as  he  was  twelve  years 
younger,  I  told  him  to  lay  aside  any  respect  on  account  of 
age,  and  to  speak  out  frankly,  no  matter  how  hard  it  hit, 
adding  that  I  had  better  hear  disagreeable  things  from  him 
than  to  have  them  said  by  critics  after  the  volumes  were 
printed. 

The  intelligent  note  on  page  51  of  my  third  volume  was 
written  by  Bourne,  as  I  state  in  the  note  itself,  but  I  did  not 
speak  of  the  large  amount  of  study  he  gave  to  it.  I  never 
knew  a  man  take  keener  interest  in  anything,  and  as  we  had 
all  the  necessary  authorities  at  hand,  he  worked  over  them 
for  two  days,  coming  down  on  the  morning  of  the  third  day 
with  the  triumphant  air  of  one  who  had  wrestled  successfully 
with  a  mathematical  problem  all  night.  He  sat  down  and, 
as  I  remember  it,  wrote  the  note  substantially  as  it  now 
stands  in  the  volume.  He  was  very  strong  on  all  economic 
and  sociological  questions,  displaying  in  a  marked  degree 
the  intellectual  stimulus  he  had  derived  from  his  association 
with  Professor  Sumner.  He  was  a  born  controversialist 
and  liked  to  argue.  "The  appetite  comes  in  eating"  is  a 
French  saying,  and  with  Bourne  his  knowledge  seemed  to  be 
best  evolved  by  the  actual  joint  working  and  collision  with 
another  mind. 


EDWARD  GAYLORD  BOURNE  199 

I  remember  one  felicitous  suggestion  of  Bourne's  which 
after  much  working  over  we  incorporated  into  a  paragraph 
to  our  common  satisfaction;  and  this  paragraph  received 
commendation  in  some  critical  notice.  Showing  this  to 
Bourne,  I  said:  "That  is  the  way  of  the  world.  You  did 
the  thinking,  I  got  the  credit."  Bourne  had,  however,  for 
gotten  his  part  in  the  paragraph.  His  mind  was  really  so 
full  of  knowledge,  when  one  could  get  at  it,  that  he  did  not 
remember  giving  off  any  part  of  it.  In  addition  to  his 
quality  of  close  concentration,  he  acquired  a  good  deal  of 
knowledge  in  a  desultory  way.  In  my  library  when  con 
versation  lagged  he  would  go  to  the  shelves  and  take  down 
book  after  book,  reading  a  little  here  or  there,  lighting  es 
pecially  upon  any  books  that  had  been  acquired  since  his 
previous  visit,  and  with  reading  he  would  comment.  This 
love  of  browsing  in  a  library  he  acquired  when  a  boy,  so 
his  brother  informs  me,  and  when  at  Yale  it  was  said  that  he 
knew  the  library  as  well  as  the  librarian  himself. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  last  spring  our  accomplished 
editor,  Mr.  Smith,  decided  that  he  could  no  longer  bear  the 
burden  of  this  highly  important  work;  and  the  question  of 
a  fit  successor  came  up  at  once  in  the  mind  of  our  President. 
Writing  to  me  while  I  was  in  Europe,  he  expressed  the  desire 
of  consulting  with  me  on  the  subject  as  soon  as  I  returned. 
I  was  unfortunately  unable  to  get  back  in  time  for  the  June 
meeting  of  the  Society;  and  afterwards  when  I  reached 
Boston  the  President  had  gone  West,  and  when  he  got  home 
I  was  at  Seal  Harbor.  To  spare  me  the  trip  to  Boston  and 
Lincoln,  he  courteously  offered  to  come  to  see  me  at  Seal 
Harbor,  where  we  had  the  opportunity  to  discuss  the  sub 
ject  in  all  its  bearings.  It  will  be  quite  evident  from  this 
narrative  that  my  choice  for  editor  would  be  no  other  than 
Professor  Bourne,  and  I  was  much  gratified  to  learn  that 


200  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  President  from  his  own  observation  and  reflection  had 
determined  on  the  same  man.  Mr.  Adams  had  been  ac 
customed  to  see  Bourne  at  meetings  of  the  American  His 
torical  Association  and  at  dinners  of  their  Council ;  but,  so 
he  informed  me,  he  was  not  specially  impressed  by  him  until 
he  read  the  essay  on  Marcus  Whitman,  which  gave  him 
a  high  idea  of  Bourne's  power  of  working  over  material,  and 
his  faculty  of  trenchant  criticism.  We  arrived  readily  at 
the  conclusion  that  Bourne  would  be  an  ideal  editor  and 
that  the  position  would  suit  him  perfectly.  Relieved  of 
the  drudgery  of  teaching,  he  could  give  full  swing  to  his  love 
of  books  and  to  his  desire  of  running  down  through  all  the 
authorities  some  fact  or  reference  bearing  upon  the  subject 
in  hand.  The  work  would  be  a  labor  of  love  on  which  he 
could  bring  to  bear  his  knowledge,  conscientious  endeavor, 
and  historical  training.  It  would  have  been  a  case  of  mu 
tual  benefit.  He  would  be  fortunate  in  securing  such  a 
position,  and  the  Society  might  be  congratulated  on  being 
able  to  get  a  man  so  peculiarly  qualified  for  editorial  work. 
But  there  was  the  question  of  Bourne's  health.  We  both 
knew  that  he  had  been  failing,  but  we  were  not  aware  that 
his  case  was  hopeless.  The  President  did  not  wish  to  pre 
sent  his  recommendation  to  the  Council  until  there  was  a 
reasonable  chance  of  his  recovery,  and  I  undertook  from 
time  to  time  to  get  information  from  a  common  friend  in 
New  Haven  of  his  progress.  But  there  was  no  good  news. 
While  Bourne,  with  the  help  of  his  devoted  wife,  made  an 
energetic  fight  for  life,  it  was  unavailing.  In  his  death  Yale 
lost  an  excellent  teacher  of  history  and  this  Society  a  can 
didate  who,  if  he  had  been  chosen,  would  have  made  an 
accomplished  editor. 


THE  PKESIDENTIAL   OFFICE 

Printed  in  Scribner's  Magazine,  of  February,  1903. 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE 

THE  English  Constitution,  as  it  existed  between  1760  and 
1787,  was  the  model  of  the  American,  but  parts  of  it  were 
inapplicable  to  the  conditions  in  which  the  thirteen  Colonies 
found  themselves,  and  where  the  model  failed  the  Conven 
tion  struck  out  anew.  The  sagacity  of  the  American  states 
men  in  this  creative  work  may  well  fill  Englishmen,  so  Sir 
Henry  Maine  wrote,  "  with  wonder  and  envy."  Mr.  Bryce's 
classification  of  constitutions  as  flexible  and  rigid  is  apt: 
of  our  Constitution  it  may  be  said  that  in  the  main  it  is 
rigid  in  those  matters  which  should  not  be  submitted  to  the 
decision  of  a  legislature  or  to  a  popular  vote  without  checks 
which  secure  reflection  and  a  chance  for  the  sober  second 
thought,  and  that  it  has  proved  flexible  in  its  adaptation  to 
the  growth  of  the  country  and  to  the  development  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Sometimes,  though,  it  is  flexible  to 
the  extent  of  lacking  precision.  An  instance  of  this  is  the 
proviso  for  the  counting  of  the  electoral  vote.  "The  votes 
shall  then  be  counted"  are  the  words.  Thus,  when  in  1876 
it  was  doubtful  whether  Tilden  or  Hayes  had  been  chosen 
President,  a  fierce  controversy  arose  as  to  who  should  count 
the  votes,  the  President  of  the  Senate  or  Congress.  While 
many  regretted  the  absence  of  an  incontrovertible  provision, 
it  was  fortunate  for  the  country  that  the  Constitution  did  not 
provide  that  the  vote  should  be  counted  by  the  President  of 
the  Senate,  who,  the  Vice  President  having  died  in  office, 
was  in  1877  a  creature  of  the  partisan  majority.  It  is  doubt 
ful,  too,  if  the  decision  of  such  an  officer  would  have  been 
acquiesced  in  by  the  mass  of  Democrats,  who  thought  that 

203 


204  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

they  had  fairly  elected  their  candidate.  There  being  no 
express  declaration  of  the  Constitution,  it  devolved  upon 
Congress  to  settle  the  dispute;  the  ability  and  patriotism 
of  that  body  was  equal  to  the  crisis.  By  a  well-devised 
plan  of  arbitration,  Congress  relieved  the  strain  and  pro 
vided  for  a  peaceful  settlement  of  a  difficulty  which  in  most 
countries  would  have  led  to  civil  war. 

In  the  provisions  conferring  the  powers  and  defining  the 
duties  of  the  executive  the  flexible  character  of  the  Con 
stitution  is  shown  in  another  way.  Everything  is  clearly 
stated,  but  the  statements  go  not  beyond  the  elementary. 
The  Convention  knew  what  it  wanted  to  say,  and  Gouver- 
neur  Morris,  who  in  the  end  drew  up  the  document,  wrote 
this  part  of  it,  as  indeed  all  other  parts,  in  clear  and  effective 
words.  It  is  due  to  him,  wrote  Laboulaye,  that  the  Con 
stitution  has  a  "  distinctness  entirely  French,  in  happy  con 
trast  to  the  complicated  language  of  the  English  laws." 
Yet  on  account  of  the  elementary  character  of  the  article 
of  the  Constitution  on  the  powers  of  the  President,  there  is 
room  for  inference,  a  chance  for  development,  and  an  oppor 
tunity  for  a  strong  man  to  imprint  his  character  upon  the 
office.  The  Convention,  writes  Mr.  Bryce,  made  its  execu 
tive  a  George  III  "  shorn  of  a  part  of  his  prerogative/ ' 
his  influence  and  dignity  diminished  by  a  reduction  of  the 
term  of  office  to  four  years.  The  English  writer  was  thor 
oughly  familiar  with  the  Federalist,  and  appreciated  Ham 
ilton's  politic  efforts  to  demonstrate  that  the  executive  of 
the  Constitution  was  modeled  after  the  governors  of  the 
states,  and  not  after  the  British  monarch ;  but  "an  enlarged 
copy  of  the  state  governor,"  Mr.  Bryce  asserts,  is  one  and 
the  same  thing  as  "a  reduced  and  improved  copy  of  the 
English  king."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  Bagehot  did  not 
believe  that  the  Americans  comprehended  the  English 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  205 

Constitution.  "Living  across  the  Atlantic,"  he  wrote,  "and 
misled  by  accepted  doctrines,  the  acute  framers  of  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution,  even  after  the  keenest  attention,  did  not 
perceive  the  Prime  Minister  to  be  the  principal  executive 
of  the  British  Constitution,  and  the  sovereign  a  cog  in  the 
mechanism ;"  and  he  seems  to  think  that  if  this  had  been 
understood  the  executive  power  would  have  been  differently 
constituted. 

It  is  a  pertinent  suggestion  of  Mr.  Bryce's  that  the  mem 
bers  of  the  Convention  must  have  been  thinking  of  their 
presiding  officer,  George  Washington,  as  the  first  man  who 
would  exercise  the  powers  of  the  executive  office  they  were 
creating.  So  it  turned  out.  Never  did  a  country  begin  a 
new  enterprise  with  so  wise  a  ruler.  An  admirable  polity 
had  been  adopted,  but  much  depended  upon  getting  it  to 
work,  and  the  man  who  was  selected  to  start  the  government 
was  the  man  of  all  men  for  the  task.  Histories  many  and 
from  different  points  of  view  have  been  written  of  Wash 
ington's  administration;  all  are  interesting,  and  the  sub 
ject  seems  to  ennoble  the  writers.  Statesmen  meeting  with 
students  to  discuss  the  character  and  political  acts  of  Wash 
ington  marvel  at  his  wisdom  in  great  things  and  his  patience 
in  small  things,  at  the  dignity  and  good  sense  with  which 
he  established  the  etiquette  of  his  office,  at  the  tact  which 
retained  in  his  service  two  such  irreconcilable  men  as  Jeffer 
son  and  Hamilton.  The  importance  of  a  good  start  for  an 
infant  government  is  well  understood.  But  for  our  little 
state  of  four  million  people  such  a  start  was  difficult  to  se 
cure.  The  contentions  which  grew  out  of  the  ratification 
of  the  Constitution  in  the  different  states  had  left  bitter 
feelings  behind  them,  and  these  domestic  troubles  were 
heightened  by  our  intimate  relations  with  foreign  countries. 
We  touched  England,  France,  and  Spain  at  delicate  points, 


206  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

and  the  infancy  of  our  nation  was  passed  during  the  tur 
moil  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the  Reign  of  Terror. 
In  our  midst  there  was  an  English  and  a  French  party. 
Moreover,  in  the  judgment  of  the  world  the  experiment  of 
the  new  government  was  foredoomed  to  failure.  Wrote 
Sir  Henry  Maine,  "It  is  not  at  all  easy  to  bring  home  to 
the  men  of  the  present  day  how  low  the  credit  of  republics 
had  sunk  before  the  establishment  of  the  United  States." 
Hardly  were  success  to  be  won  had  we  fallen  upon  quiet 
times;  but  with  free  governments  discredited,  and  the 
word  "  liberty"  made  a  reproach  by  the  course  of  the  French 
Revolution,  it  would  seem  impossible. 

Washington's  prescience  is  remarkable.  Recognizing, 
in  October,  1789,  that  France  had  "gone  triumphantly 
through  the  first  paroxysm,"  he  felt  that  she  must  encoun 
ter  others,  that  more  blood  must  be  shed,  that  she  might 
run  from  one  extreme  to  another,  and  that  "a  higher-toned 
despotism"  might  replace  "the  one  which  existed  before." 
Mentally  prepared  as  he  was,  he  met  with  skill  the  difficulties 
as  they  arose,  so  that  the  conduct  of  our  foreign  relations 
during  the  eight  years  of  his  administration  was  marked 
by  discretion  and  furnished  a  good  pattern  to  follow.  Dur 
ing  his  foreign  negotiations  he  determined  a  constitutional 
question  of  importance.  When  the  Senate  had  ratified  and 
Washington,  after  some  delay,  had  signed  the  Jay  treaty, 
the  House  of  Representatives,  standing  for  the  popular 
clamor  against  it,  asked  the  President  for  all  the  papers 
relating  to  the  negotiation,  on  the  ground  that  the  House 
of  Representatives  must  give  its  concurrence.  This  demand 
he  resisted,  maintaining  that  it  struck  at  "the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  Constitution,"  which  conferred  upon  the 
President  and  the  Senate  the  power  of  making  treaties,  and 
provided  that  these  treaties  when  made  and  ratified  were 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  207 

the  supreme  law  of  the  land.  In  domestic  affairs  he  showed 
discernment  in  selecting  as  his  confidential  adviser,  Alex 
ander  Hamilton,  a  man  who  had  great  constructive  talent ; 
and  he  gave  a  demonstration  of  the  physical  strength  of 
the  government  by  putting  down  the  whisky  rebellion  in 
Pennsylvania.  During  his  eight  years  he  construed  the 
powers  conferred  upon  the  executive  by  the  Constitution 
with  wisdom,  and  exercised  them  with  firmness  and  vigor. 
Washington  was  a  man  of  exquisite  manners  and  his  con 
duct  of  the  office  gave  it  a  dignity  and  prestige  which,  with 
the  exception  of  a  part  of  one  term,  it  has  never  lost. 

Four  of  the  five  Presidents  who  followed  Washington  were 
men  of  education  and  ability,  and  all  of  them  had  large 
political  training  and  experience ;  they  reached  their  posi 
tion  by  the  process  of  a  natural  selection  in  politics,  being 
entitled  fitly  to  the  places  for  which  they  were  chosen.  The 
three  first  fell  upon  stormy  times  and  did  their  work  during 
periods  of  intense  partisan  excitement;  they  were  also 
subject  to  personal  detraction,  but  the  result  in  the  aggre 
gate  of  their  administrations  was  good,  inasmuch  as  they 
either  maintained  the  power  of  the  executive  or  increased 
its  influence.  Despite  their  many  mistakes  they  somehow 
overcame  the  great  difficulties.  Each  one  did  something 
of  merit  and  the  country  made  a  distinct  gain  from  John 
Adams  to  Monroe.  Any  one  of  them  suffers  by  comparison 
with  Washington:  the  "era  of  good  feeling"  was  due  to 
Congress  and  the  people  as  well  as  to  the  executive.  Never 
theless,  the  three  turbulent  administrations  and  the  two 
quiet  ones  which  succeeded  Washington's  may  at  this  dis 
tance  from  them  be  contemplated  with  a  feeling  of  gratu- 
lation.  The  Presidents  surrounded  themselves  for  the  most 
part  with  men  of  ability,  experience,  and  refinement,  who 
carried  on  the  government  with  dignity  and  a  sense  of  pro- 


208  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

portion,  building  well  upon  the  foundations  which  Wash 
ington  had  laid. 

A  contrast  between  France  and  the  United  States  leads 
to  curious  reflections.  The  one  has  a  past  rich  in  art,  litera 
ture,  and  architecture,  which  the  other  almost  entirely 
lacks.  But  politically  the  older  country  has  broken  with 
the  past,  while  we  have  political  traditions  peculiar  to  our 
selves  of  the  highest  value.  For  the  man  American-born 
they  may  be  summed  up  in  Washington,  the  rest  of  the 
"Fathers,"  and  the  Constitution;  and  those  who  leave 
England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Wales,  Germany,  and  Scandi 
navia  to  make  their  home  in  America  soon  come  to  share  in 
these  possessions.  While  the  immigrants  from  southern 
Europe  do  not  comprehend  the  Constitution,  they  know 
Washington.  An  object  lesson  may  be  had  almost  any 
pleasant  Sunday  or  holiday  in  the  public  garden  in  Boston 
from  the  group  of  Italians  who  gather  about  the  statue  of 
Washington,  showing,  by  their  mobile  faces  and  animated 
talk,  that  they  revere  him  who  is  the  father  of  their  adopted 
country. 

During  these  five  administrations,  at  least  two  important 
extensions  or  assertions  of  executive  power  were  made.  In 
1803  Jefferson  bought  Louisiana,  doing,  he  said,  "an  act 
beyond  the  Constitution."  He  was  a  strict  constructionist, 
and  was  deeply  concerned  at  the  variance  between  his  con 
stitutional  principles  and  a  desire  for  the  material  advan 
tage  of  his  country.  In  an  effort  to  preserve  his  consistency 
he  suggested  to  his  Cabinet  and  political  friends  an  amend 
ment  to  the  Constitution  approving  and  confirming  the 
cession  of  this  territory,  but  they,  deeming  such  an  amend 
ment  entirely  unnecessary,  received  his  suggestion  coldly. 
In  the  debate  on  the  Louisiana  treaty  in  the  Senate  and  the 
House,  all  speakers  of  both  parties  agreed  that  "the  United 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  209 

States  government  had  the  power  to  acquire  new  territory 
either  by  conquest  or  by  treaty."  1  Louisiana,  " without 
its  consent  and  against  its  will,"  was  annexed  to  the  United 
States,  and  Jefferson  "made  himself  monarch  of  the  new 
territory,  and  wielded  over  it,  against  its  protests,  the  powers 
of  its  old  kings."  2 

The  assertion  by  the  President  in  1823  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  (which  Mr.  Worthington  C.  Ford  has  shown  to  be 
the  John  Quincy  Adams  doctrine)  is  an  important  circum 
stance  in  the  development  of  the  executive  power. 

President  John  Quincy  Adams  was  succeeded  by  Andrew 
Jackson,  a  man  of  entirely  different  character  from  those 
who  had  preceded  him  in  the  office,  and  he  represented 
different  aims.  Adams  deserved  another  term.  His  sturdy 
Americanism,  tempered  by  the  cautiousness  in  procedure 
which  was  due  to  his  rare  training,  made  him  an  excellent 
public  servant,  and  the  country  erred  in  not  availing  itself 
of  his  further  service.  The  change  from  the  regime  of  the 
first  six  Presidents  to  that  of  Jackson  was  probably  inevi 
table.  A  high-toned  democracy,  based  on  a  qualified  suf 
frage,  believing  in  the  value  of  training  for  public  life  and 
administrative  office,  setting  a  value  on  refinement  and  good 
manners,  was  in  the  end  sure  to  give  way  to  a  pure  democ 
racy  based  on  universal  suffrage  whenever  it  could  find 
a  leader  to  give  it  force  and  direction.  Jackson  was  such  a 
leader.  His  followers  felt:  "He  is  one  of  us.  He  is  not 
proud  and  does  not  care  for  style."  3  The  era  of  vulgarity 
in  national  politics  was  ushered  in  by  Jackson,  who  as  Presi 
dent  introduced  the  custom  of  rewarding  political  workers 
with  offices,  an  innovation  entirely  indefensible;  he  ought 
to  have  continued  the  practice  of  his  six  predecessors.  The 
interaction  between  government  and  politics  on  the  one  hand 

1  Henry  Adams,  II,  113.          2  Ibid.,  130.          3  Sumner's  Jackson,  138. 


210  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

and  the  life  of  the  people  on  the  other  is  persistent,  and  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  United  States  would  have 
seemed  as  it  did  to  Dickens  had  not  Jackson  played  such 
an  important  part  in  the  vulgarization  of  politics.  Yet  it 
was  a  happy  country,  as  the  pages  of  Tocqueville  bear 
witness. 

Jackson  was  a  strong  executive  and  placed  in  his  Cabinet 
men  who  would  do  his  will,  and  who,  from  his  own  point 
of  view,  were  good  advisers,  since  they  counseled  him  to 
pursue  the  course  he  had  marked  out  for  himself.  Com 
paring  his  Cabinet  officers  to  those  of  the  Presidents 
preceding  him,  one  realizes  that  another  plan  of  governing 
was  set  on  foot,  based  on  the  theory  that  any  American 
citizen  is  fit  for  any  position  to  which  he  is  called.  It  was 
an  era  when  special  training  for  administrative  work 
began  to  be  slighted,  when  education  beyond  the  rudiments 
was  considered  unnecessary  except  in  the  three  professions, 
when  the  practical  man  was  apotheosized  and  the  bookish 
man  despised.  Jackson,  uneducated  and  with  little  ex 
perience  in  civil  life,  showed  what  power  might  be  exer 
cised  by  an  arbitrary,  unreasonable  man  who  had  the  people 
at  his  back.  The  brilliant  three  —  Webster,  Clay,  and  Cal- 
houn  —  were  unable  to  prevail  against  his  power. 

Jackson's  financial  policy  may  be  defended ;  yet  had  it 
not  been  for  his  course  during  the  nullification  trouble,  his 
declaration,  "Our  Federal  Union:  It  must  be  preserved/' 
and  his  consistent  and  vigorous  action  in  accordance  with 
that  sentiment  it  would  be  difficult  to  affirm  that  the  in 
fluence  of  his  two  terms  of  office  was  good.  It  cannot  be 
said  that  he  increased  permanently  the  power  of  the  exec 
utive,  but  he  showed  its  capabilities.  It  is  somewhat 
curious,  however,  that  Tocqueville,  whose  observations  were 
made  under  Jackson,  should  have  written:  "The  Presi- 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  211 

dent  possesses  almost  royal  prerogatives,  which  he  never 
has  an  opportunity  of  using.  .  .  .  The  laws  permit  him 
to  be  strong;  circumstances  keep  him  weak." 

The  eight  Presidents  from  Jackson  to  Lincoln  did  not 
raise  the  character  of  the  presidential  office.  Van  Buren 
was  the  heir  of  Jackson.  Of  the  others,  five  owed  their 
nominations  to  their  availability.  The  evil  which  Jackson 
did  lived  after  him ;  indeed,  only  a  man  as  powerful  for  the 
good  as  he  had  been  for  the  bad  could  have  restored  the 
civil  service  to  the  merit  system  which  had  prevailed  before 
he  occupied  the  White  House.  The  offices  were  at  stake 
in  every  election,  and  the  scramble  for  them  after  the  deter 
mination  of  the  result  was  great  and  pressing.  The  chief 
business  of  a  President  for  many  months  after  his  inaugu 
ration  was  the  dealing  out  of  the  offices  to  his  followers  and 
henchmen.  It  was  a  bad  scheme,  from  the  political  point  of 
view,  for  every  President  except  him  who  inaugurated  it. 
Richelieu  is  reported  to  have  said,  on  making  an  appoint 
ment,  "I  have  made  a  hundred  enemies  and  one  ingrate." 
So  might  have  said  many  times  the  Presidents  who  suc 
ceeded  Jackson. 

The  Whig,  a  very  respectable  party,  having  in  its  ranks 
the  majority  of  the  men  of  wealth  and  education,  fell  a 
victim  to  the  doctrine  of  availability  when  it  nominated 
Harrison  on  account  of  his  military  reputation.  He  lived 
only  one  month  after  his  inauguration,  and  Tyler,  the  Vice 
President,  who  succeeded  him,  reverted  to  his  old  political 
principles,  which  were  Democratic,  and  broke  with  the 
Whigs.  By  an  adroit  and  steady  use  of  the  executive  power 
he  effected  the  annexation  of  Texas,  but  the  master  spirit 
in  this  enterprise  was  Calhoun,  his  Secretary  of  State. 
Polk,  his  Democratic  successor,  coveted  California  and  New 
Mexico,  tried  to  purchase  them,  and  not  being  able  to  do 


212  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

this,  determined  on  war.  In  fact,  he  had  decided  to  send 
in  a  war  message  to  Congress  before  the  news  came  that  the 
Mexicans,  goaded  to  it  by  the  action  of  General  Taylor, 
under  direct  orders  of  the  President,  had  attacked  an  Amer 
ican  force  and  killed  sixteen  of  our  dragoons.  This  gave 
a  different  complexion  to  his  message,  and  enabled  him  to 
get  a  strong  backing  from  Congress  for  his  war  policy.  The 
actions  of  Tyler  and  of  Polk  illustrate  the  power  inherent 
in  the  executive  office.  It  might  seem  that  the  exercise 
of  this  authority,  securing  for  us  at  small  material  cost  the 
magnificent  domains  of  Texas,  California,  and  New  Mexico, 
would  have  given  these  Presidents  a  fame  somewhat  like 
that  which  Jefferson  won  by  the  purchase  of  Louisiana. 
But  such  has  not  been  the  case.  The  main  reason  is  that 
the  extension  of  slavery  was  involved  in  both  enterprises, 
and  the  histories  of  these  times,  which  have  molded  his 
torical  sentiment,  have  been  written  from  the  anti-slavery 
point  of  view.  It  seems  hardly  probable  that  this  senti 
ment  will  be  changed  in  any  time  that  we  can  forecast,  but 
there  is  an  undoubted  tendency  in  the  younger  historical 
students  to  look  upon  the  expansion  of  the  country  as  the 
important  consideration,  and  the  slavery  question  as  inci 
dental.  Professor  von  Hoist  thought  this  changing  histori 
cal  sentiment  entirely  natural,  but  he  felt  sure  that  in  the 
end  men  would  come  round  to  the  antislavery  view,  of 
which  he  was  so  powerful  an  advocate. 

From  Taylor  to  Lincoln  slavery  dominated  all  other 
questions.  Taylor  was  a  Southern  man  and  a  slaveholder, 
and  by  his  course  on  the  Compromise  measures  attracted 
the  favor  of  antislavery  men ;  while  Fillmore  of  New  York, 
who  succeeded  this  second  President  to  die  in  office,  and 
who  exerted  the  power  of  the  Administration  to  secure  the 
passage  of  Clay's  Compromise  and  signed  the  Fugitive 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  213 

Slave  Law,  had  but  a  small  political  following  at  the  North. 
Pierce  and  Buchanan  were  weak,  the  more  positive  men 
in  their  Cabinets  and  in  the  Senate  swayed  them.  For  a 
part  of  both  of  their  terms  the  House  of  Representatives 
was  controlled  by  the  opposition,  the  Senate  remaining 
Democratic.  These  circumstances  are  evidence  both  of  the 
length  of  time  required  to  change  the  political  complexion 
of  the  Senate  and  of  the  increasing  power  of  the  North, 
which  was  dominant  in  the  popular  House.  For  the  decade 
before  the  Civil  War  we  should  study  the  Senate,  the  House 
of  Representatives,  the  Supreme  Court,  the  action  of  the 
states,  and  popular  sentiment.  The  executive  is  still 
powerful,  but  he  is  powerful  because  he  is  the  representative 
of  a  party  or  faction  which  dictates  the  use  that  shall  be 
made  of  his  constitutional  powers.  The  presidential  office 
loses  interest :  irresolute  men  are  in  the  White  House,  strong 
men  everywhere  else. 

Lincoln  is  inaugurated  President;  the  Civil  War  ensues, 
and  with  it  an  extraordinary  development  of  the  executive 
power.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  ruler  of  a  republic 
which  sprang  from  a  resistance  to  the  English  king  and 
Parliament  should  exercise  more  arbitrary  power  than  any 
Englishman  since  Oliver  Cromwell,  and  that  many  of  his 
acts  should  be  worthy  of  a  Tudor.  Lincoln  was  a  good 
lawyer  who  reverenced  the  Constitution  and  the  laws,  and 
only  through  necessity  assumed  and  exercised  extra-legal 
powers,  trying  at  the  same  time  to  give  to  these  actions  the 
color  of  legality.  Hence  his  theory  of  the  war  power  of  the 
Constitution,  which  may  be  construed  to  permit  everything 
necessary  to  carry  on  the  war.  Yet  his  dictatorship  was 
different  from  Caesar's  and  different  from  the  absolute 
authority  of  Napoleon.  He  acted  under  the  restraints  im 
posed  by  his  own  legal  conscience  and  patriotic  soul,  whose 


214  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

influence  was  revealed  in  his  confidential  letters  and  talks. 
We  know  furthermore  that  he  often  took  counsel  of  his 
Cabinet  officers  before  deciding  matters  of  moment.  Cer 
tain  it  is  that  in  arbitrary  arrests  Seward  and  Stanton  were 
disposed  to  go  further  than  Lincoln.  The  spirit  of  arbi 
trary  power  was  in  the  air,  and  unwise  and  unjust  acts  were 
done  by  subordinates,  which,  although  Lincoln  would  not 
have  done  them  himself,  he  deemed  it  better  to  ratify  than 
to  undo.  This  was  notably  the  case  in  the  arrest  of  Vallan- 
digham.  Again,  Congress  did  not  always  do  what  Lincoln 
wished,  and  certain  men  of  his  own  party  in  Congress  were 
strong  enough  to  influence  his  actions  in  various  ways. 
But,  after  all,  he  was  himself  a  strong  man  exercising  com 
prehensive  authority;  and  it  is  an  example  of  the  flexi 
bility  of  the  Constitution  that,  while  it  surely  did  not  au 
thorize  certain  of  Lincoln's  acts,  it  did  not  expressly  forbid 
them.  It  was,  for  example,  an  open  question  whether  the 
Constitution  authorized  Congress  or  the  President  to  sus 
pend  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus. 

It  seems  to  be  pretty  well  settled  by  the  common  sense 
of  mankind  that  when  a  nation  is  fighting  for  its  existence 
it  cannot  be  fettered  by  all  the  legal  technicalities  which 
obtain  in  the  time  of  peace.  Happy  the  country  whose 
dictatorship,  if  dictator  there  must  be,  falls  into  wise  and 
honest  hands !  The  honesty,  magnanimity,  and  wisdom  of 
Lincoln  guided  him  aright,  and  no  harm  has  come  to  the 
great  principles  of  liberty  from  the  arbitrary  acts  which  he 
did  or  suffered  to  be  done.  On  the  other  hand  he  has  so 
impressed  himself  upon  the  Commonwealth  that  he  has 
made  a  precedent  for  future  rulers  in  a  time  of  national 
peril,  and  what  he  excused  and  defended  will  be  assumed 
as  a  matter  of  course  because  it  will  be  according  to  the 
Constitution  as  interpreted  by  Abraham  Lincoln.  This  the 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  215 

Supreme  Court  foresaw  when  it  rendered  its  judgment  in 
the  Milligan  case,  saying:  " Wicked  men  ambitious  of 
power,  with  hatred  of  liberty  and  contempt  of  law,  may 
fill  the  place  once  occupied  by  Washington  and  Lincoln, 
and  if  this  right  is  conceded  [that  of  a  commander  in  a  time 
of  war  to  declare  martial  law  within  the  lines  of  his  military 
district  and  subject  citizens  as  well  as  soldiers  to  the  rule  of 
his  will]  and  the  calamities  of  war  again  befall  us,  the  dan 
gers  to  human  liberty  are  frightful  to  contemplate. "  No 
one  can  deny  that  a  danger  here  exists,  but  it  is  not  so  great 
as  the  solemn  words  of  the  Supreme  Court  might  lead  one 
to  believe.  For  Lincoln  could  not  have  persisted  in  his  ar 
bitrary  acts  had  a  majority  of  Congress  definitely  opposed 
them,  and  his  real  strength  lay  in  the  fact  that  he  had  the 
people  at  his  back.  This  may  be  said  of  the  period  from 
the  first  call  of  troops  in  April,  1861,  until  the  summer  of 
1862.  McClellan's  failure  on  the  Peninsula,  Pope's  disaster 
at  the  second  battle  of  Bull  Run,  the  defeats  at  Fredericks- 
burg  and  Chancellorsville  lost  Lincoln  the  confidence  of 
many;  and  while  the  emancipation  proclamation  of  Sep 
tember,  1862,  intensified  the  support  of  others,  it  neverthe 
less  alienated  some  Republicans  and  gave  to  the  opposition 
of  the  Democrats  a  new  vigor.  But  after  Gettysburg  and 
Vicksburg  in  July,  1863,  Lincoln  had  the  support  of  the  mass 
of  the  Northern  people.  Whatever  he  did  the  people  be 
lieved  was  right  because  he  had  done  it.  The  trust  each 
placed  in  the  other  is  one  of  the  inspiring  examples  of  free 
government  and  democracy.  Lincoln  did  not  betray  their 
confidence:  they  did  not  falter  save  possibly  for  brief 
moments  during  the  gloomy  summer  of  1864.  The  people 
who  gave  their  unreserved  support  to  Lincoln  were  endued 
with  intelligence  and  common  sense ;  not  attracted  by  any 
personal  magnetism  of  the  man,  they  had,  by  a  process  of 


216  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

homely  reasoning,  attained  their  convictions  and  from 
these  they  were  not  to  be  shaken.  This  is  the  safety  of  a 
dictatorship  as  long  as  the  same  intelligence  obtains  among 
the  voters  as  now;  for  the  people  will  not  support  a  ruler 
in  the  exercise  of  extra-legal  powers  unless  he  be  honest  and 
patriotic.  The  danger  may  come  in  a  time  of  trouble  from 
either  an  irresolute  or  an  unduly  obstinate  executive.  The 
irresolute  man  would  baffle  the  best  intentions  of  the  voters ; 
the  obstinate  man  might  quarrel  with  Congress  and  the 
people.  Either  event  in  time  of  war  would  be  serious  and 
might  be  disastrous.  But  the  chances  are  against  another 
Buchanan  or  Johnson  in  the  presidential  office. 

If  the  Civil  War  showed  the  flexibility  of  the  Constitution 
in  that  the  executive  by  the  general  agreement  of  Congress 
and  the  people  was  able  to  assume  unwarranted  powers, 
the  course  of  affairs  under  Johnson  demonstrated  the 
strength  that  Congress  derived  from  the  organic  act.  The 
story  is  told  in  a  sentence  by  Blaine:  "Two  thirds  of  each 
House  united  and  stimulated  to  one  end  can  practically 
neutralize  the  executive  power  of  the  government  and  lay 
down  its  policy  in  defiance  of  the  efforts  and  opposition  of 
the  President."  1  What  a  contrast  between  the  two  ad 
ministrations  !  Under  Lincoln  Congress,  for  the  most  part, 
simply  registered  the  will  of  the  President;  under  Johnson 
the  President  became  a  mere  executive  clerk  of  Congress. 
In  the  one  case  the  people  supported  the  President,  in  the 
other  they  sustained  Congress.  Nothing  could  better  illus 
trate  the  flexibility  of  the  Constitution  than  the  contrast 
between  these  administrations;  but  it  needs  no  argument 
to  show  that  to  pass  from  one  such  extreme  to  another  is 
not  healthy  for  the  body  politic.  The  violent  antagonisms 
aroused  during  Johnson's  administration,  when  the  difficult 
1  Twenty  Years  of  Congress,  II,  185. 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  217 

questions  to  be  settled  needed  the  best  statesmanship  of 
the  country,  and  when  the  President  and  Congress  should 
have  cooperated  wisely  and  sympathetically,  did  incal 
culable  harm.  Johnson,  by  habits,  manners,  mind,  and 
character,  was  unfit  for  the  presidential  office,  and  whatever 
may  have  been  the  merit  of  his  policy,  a  policy  devised  by 
angels  could  never  have  been  carried  on  by  such  an  advo 
cate.  The  American  people  love  order  and  decency;  they 
have  a  high  regard  for  the  presidential  office,  and  they  desire 
to  see  its  occupant  conduct  himself  with  dignity.  Jackson 
and  Lincoln  lacked  many  of  the  external  graces  of  a  gentle 
man,  but  both  had  native  qualities  which  enabled  them  to 
bear  themselves  with  dignity  on  public  occasions.  Johnson 
degraded  the  office,  and  he  is  the  only  one  of  our  Presidents 
of  whom  this  can  be  said.  Bagehot,  writing  in  1872,  drew 
an  illustration  from  one  of  the  darkest  periods  of  our  repub 
lic  to  show  the  superiority  of  the  English  Constitution.  If 
we  have  a  Prime  Minister  who  does  not  suit  Parliament  and 
the  people,  he  argued,  we  remove  him  by  a  simple  vote  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  United  States  can  only  get 
rid  of  its  undesirable  executive  by  a  cumbrous  and  tedious 
process  which  can  only  be  brought  to  bear  during  a  period 
of  revolutionary  excitement;  and  even  this  failed  because 
a  legal  case  was  not  made  against  the  President.  The  criti 
cism  was  pregnant,  but  the  remedy  was  not  Cabinet  re 
sponsibility.  Whatever  may  be  the  merits  or  demerits  of 
our  polity,  it  has  grown  as  has  the  English;  it  has  fitted 
itself  to  the  people,  and  cabinet  government  cannot  be  had 
without  a  complete  change  of  the  organic  act,  which  is 
neither  possible  nor  desirable.  The  lesson  was  that  the 
national  conventions  should  exercise  more  care  ki  naming 
their  vice-presidential  candidates;  and  these  bodies  have 
heeded  it.  When  Grant,  popular  throughout  the  country, 


218  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

nominated  by  the  unanimous  vote  of  the  Republican  con 
vention,  became  President,  Congress  restored  to  the  execu 
tive  a  large  portion  of  the  powers  of  which  it  had  been  shorn 
during  Johnson's  administration.  Grant  had  splendid  op 
portunities  which  he  did  not  improve,  and  he  left  no  especial 
impression  on  the  office.  In  the  opinion  of  one  of  his  warm 
friends  and  supporters  he  made  "a  pretty  poor  President." 
An  able  opposition  to  him  developed  in  his  own  party ;  and 
as  he  was  a  sensitive  man  he  felt  keenly  their  attacks.  Colo 
nel  John  Hay  told  me  that,  when  on  a  visit  to  Washington 
during  Grant's  administration,  he  had  arrived  at  the  Arling 
ton  Hotel  at  an  early  hour  and  started  out  for  a  walk ;  in 
front  of  the  White  House  he  was  surprised  to  meet  the 
President,  who  was  out  for  the  same  purpose.  The  two 
walked  together  to  the  Capitol  and  back,  Grant  showing 
himself  to  be  anything  but  a  silent  man.  Manifesting  a  keen 
sensitiveness  to  the  attacks  upon  him,  he  talked  all  of  the 
time  in  a  voluble  manner,  and  the  burden  of  his  talk  was  a 
defense  of  his  administrative  acts.  It  is  impossible  in  our 
minds  to  dissociate  Grant  the  President  from  Grant  the 
General,  and  for  this  reason  American  historical  criticism 
will  deal  kindly  with  him.  The  brilliant  victor  of  Donelson, 
the  bold  strategist  of  Vicksburg,  the  compeller  of  men  at 
Chattanooga,  the  vanquisher  of  Robert  E.  Lee  in  March  and 
April,  1865,  the  magnanimous  conqueror  at  Appomattox, 
will  be  treated  with  charity  by  those  who  write  about  his 
presidential  terms,  because  he  meant  well  although  he  did 
not  know  how  to  do  well.  Moreover,  the  good  which  Grant 
did  is  of  that  salient  kind  which  will  not  be  forgotten.  The 
victorious  general,  with  two  trusted  military  subordinates 
in  the  prime  of  life  and  a  personnel  for  a  strong  navy,  per 
sisted,  under  the  guidance  of  his  wise  Secretary  of  State, 
Hamilton  Fish,  in  negotiating  a  treaty  which  provided  for 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  219 

arbitration  and  preserved  the  peace  with  Great  Britain; 
although,  in  the  opinion  of  the  majority,  the  country  had  a 
just  cause  of  war  in  the  escape  of  the  Florida  and  the  Ala 
bama.  After  the  panic  of  1873,  when  financiers  and  capi 
talists  lost  their  heads,  and  Congress  with  the  approval  of 
public  sentiment  passed  an  act  increasing  the  amount  of 
United  States  notes  in  circulation,  Grant,  by  a  manly  and 
bold  veto,  prevented  this  inflation  of  the  currency.  The 
wisdom  of  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  in  giving  the 
President  the  veto  power  was  exemplified.  Congress  did  not 
pass  the  act  over  the  veto,  and  Grant  has  been  justified  by 
the  later  judgment  of  the  nation.  His  action  demonstrated 
what  a  President  may  do  in  resisting  by  his  constitutional 
authority  some  transitory  wave  of  popular  opinion,  and  it 
has  proved  a  precedent  of  no  mean  value.  Johnson's  vetoes 
became  ridiculous.  Grant's  veto  compensates  for  many 
of  his  mistakes. 

Said  Chancellor  Kent  in  1826 :  "If  ever  the  tranquillity  of 
this  nation  is  to  be  disturbed  and  its  liberties  endangered  by 
a  struggle  for  power,  it  will  be  upon  this  very  subject  of  the 
choice  of  a  President.  This  is  the  question  that  is  eventu 
ally  to  test  the  goodness  and  try  the  strength  of  the  Con 
stitution,  and  if  we  shall  be  able  for  half  a  century  hereafter 
to  continue  to  elect  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  Union  with 
discretion,  moderation,  and  integrity  we  shall  undoubtedly 
stamp  the  highest  value  on  our  national  character."  Just 
fifty  years  later  came  a  more  dangerous  test  than  Kent 
could  have  imagined.  Somewhat  more  than  half  of  the 
country  believed  that  the  states  of  Florida  and  Louisiana 
should  be  counted  for  Tilden,  and  that  he  was  therefore 
elected.  On  the  other  hand,  nearly  one  half  of  the  voters 
were  of  the  opinion  that  those  electoral  votes  should  be 
given  to  Hayes,  which  would  elect  him  by  the  majority  of 


220  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

one  electoral  vote.  Each  of  the  parties  had  apparently  a 
good  case,  and  after  an  angry  controversy  became  only  the 
more  firmly  and  sincerely  convinced  that  its  own  point  of 
view  was  unassailable.  The  Senate  was  Republican,  the 
House  Democratic.  The  great  Civil  War  had  been  ended 
only  eleven  years  before,  and  the  country  was  full  of  fighting 
men.  The  Southern  people  were  embittered  against  the 
dominant  party  for  the  reason  that  Reconstruction  had 
gone  otherwise  than  they  had  expected  in  1865  when  they 
laid  down  their  arms.  The  country  was  on  the  verge  of  a 
civil  war  over  the  disputed  Presidency  —  a  war  that  might 
have  begun  with  an  armed  encounter  on  the  floor  of  the 
Senate  or  the  House.  This  was  averted  by  a  carefully 
prepared  congressional  act,  which  in  effect  left  the  dispute 
to  a  board  of  arbitration.  To  the  statesmen  of  both  parties 
who  devised  this  plan  and  who  cooperated  in  carrying  the 
measure  through  Congress ;  to  the  members  of  the  Electoral 
Commission,  who  in  the  bitterest  strife  conducted  them 
selves  with  dignity ;  to  the  Democratic  Speaker  of  the  House 
and  the  Democrats  who  followed  his  lead,  the  eternal  grati 
tude  of  the  country  is  due.  "He  that  ruleth  his  spirit  is 
better  than  he  that  taketh  a  city."  The  victories  of  Manila 
and  Santiago  are  as  nothing  compared  with  the  victorious 
restraint  of  the  American  people  in  1876  and  1877  and  the 
acquiescence  of  one  half  of  the  country  in  what  they  be 
lieved  to  be  an  unrighteous  decision.  Hayes  was  inaugu 
rated  peacefully,  but  had  to  conduct  his  administration  in 
the  view  of  4,300,000  voters  who  believed  that,  whatever 
might  be  his  legal  claim,  he  had  no  moral  right  to  the  place 
he  occupied.  The  Democrats  controlled  the  House  of  Rep 
resentatives  during  the  whole  of  his  term,  and  the  Senate 
for  a  part  of  it,  and  at  the  outset  he  encountered  the  opposi 
tion  of  the  stalwart  faction  of  his  own  party.  Nevertheless, 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  221 

he  made  a  successful  President,  and  under  him  the  office 
gained  in  force  and  dignity.  Hayes  was  not  a  man  of  bril 
liant  parts  or  wide  intelligence,  but  he  had  common  sense 
and  decision  of  character.  Surrounding  himself  with  a 
strong  Cabinet,  three  members  of  which  were  really  remark 
able  for  their  ability,  he  entered  upon  a  distinct  policy  from 
which  flowed  good  results.  He  withdrew  the  Federal  troops 
from  the  states  of  South  Carolina  and  Louisiana,  inaugu 
rating  in  these  states  an  era  of  comparative  peace  and  tran 
quillity.  Something  was  done  in  the  interest  of  Civil 
Service  Reform.  In  opposition  to  the  view  of  his  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  and  confidential  friend,  John  Sherman,  he 
vetoed  the  act  of  1878  for  the  remonetization  of  silver  by 
the  coinage  of  a  certain  amount  of  silver  dollars  —  the  first 
of  those  measures  which  almost  brought  us  to  the  monetary 
basis  of  silver.  His  guiding  principle  was  embodied  in  a 
remark  he  made  in  his  inaugural  address,  "He  serves  his 
party  best  who  serves  the  country  best."  He  and  his  ac 
complished  wife  had  a  social  and  moral  influence  in  Wash 
ington  of  no  mean  value.  The  Civil  War  had  been  followed 
by  a  period  of  corruption,  profligacy,  and  personal  immo 
rality.  In  politics,  if  a  man  were  sound  on  the  main  question, 
which  meant  if  he  were  a  thorough-going  Republican,  all 
else  was  forgiven.  Under  Hayes  account  was  again  taken 
of  character  and  fitness.  The  standard  of  political  admin 
istration  was  high.  While  Mrs.  Hayes  undoubtedly  carried 
her  total  abstinence  principles  to  an  extreme  not  warranted 
by  the  usage  of  good  society,  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the 
White  House  was  that  of  most  American  homes.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Hayes  belonged  to  that  large  class  who  are  neither  rich 
nor  poor,  neither  learned  nor  ignorant,  but  who  are  led  both 
by  their  native  common  sense  and  by  their  upbringing  to 
have  a  high  respect  for  learning,  a  belief  in  education, 


222  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

morality,  and  religion,  and  a  lofty  ideal  for  their  own  per 
sonal  conduct. 

The  salient  feature  of  Garfield's  few  months  of  adminis 
tration  was  a  quarrel  between  him  and  the  senators  from 
New  York  State  about  an  important  appointment.  Into 
this  discussion,  which  ended  in  a  tragedy,  entered  so  many 
factors  that  it  is  impossible  to  determine  exactly  the  in 
fluence  on  the  power  of  the  President  and  the  growing  power 
of  the  Senate.  One  important  result  of  it  shall  be  men 
tioned.  The  Civil  Service  Reform  Bill,  introduced  into  the 
Senate  by  a  Democrat,  was  enacted  during  Arthur's  admin 
istration  by  a  large  and  non-partisan  majority.  It  pro 
vided  for  a  non-partisan  civil  service  commission,  and 
established  open  competitive  examinations  for  applicants 
for  certain  offices,  making  a  commencement  by  law  of  the 
merit  system,  which  before  had  depended  entirely  upon 
executive  favor.  It  was  a  victory  for  reformers  who  had 
been  advocating  legislation  of  such  a  character  from  a 
period  shortly  after  the  close  of  the  Civil  War;  for  it  was 
at  that  time  that  a  few  began  the  work  of  educating  public 
sentiment,  which  had  acquiesced  in  the  rotation  of  offices 
as  an  American  principle  well  worthy  of  maintenance. 
Consequences  far-reaching  and  wholesome  followed  the 
passage  of  this  important  act.  Grant  had  attempted  and 
Hayes  had  accomplished  a  measure  of  reform,  but  to  really 
fix  the  merit  system  in  the  civil  service  a  law  was  needed. 

Regarded  by  the  lovers  of  good  government  as  a  machine 
politician,  Arthur  happily  disappointed  them  by  breaking 
loose  from  his  old  associations  and  pursuing  a  manly  course. 
He  gave  the  country  a  dignified  administration ;  but,  even 
had  he  been  a  man  to  impress  his  character  upon  the  office, 
conditions  were  against  him.  His  party  was  torn  by  in 
ternal  dissensions  and  suffered  many  defeats,  of  which  the 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  223 

most  notable  was  in  his  own  state  of  New  York,  where  his 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  and  personal  friend  was  over 
whelmingly  defeated  for  governor  by  Grover  Cleveland. 

The  unprecedented  majority  which  Cleveland  received 
in  this  election  and  his  excellent  administration  as  Gov 
ernor  of  New  York  secured  for  him  the  Democratic  nomina 
tion  for  President  in  1884.  New  York  State  decided  the 
election,  but  the  vote  was  so  close  that  for  some  days  the 
result  was  in  doubt  and  the  country  was  nervous  lest  there 
should  be  another  disputed  Presidency;  in  the  end  it  was 
determined  that  Cleveland  had  carried  that  state  by  a 
plurality  of  1149.  Cleveland  was  the  first  Democratic 
President  elected  since  1856;  the  Democrats  had  been  out 
of  office  for  twenty-four  years,  and  it  had  galled  them  to 
think  that  their  historic  party  had  so  long  been  deprived  of 
power  and  patronage.  While  many  of  their  leaders  had  a 
good  record  on  the  question  of  Civil  Service  Reform,  the 
rank  and  file  believed  in  the  Jacksonian  doctrine  of  reward 
ing  party  workers  with  the  offices,  or,  as  most  of  them  would 
have  put  it,  "To  the  victors  belong  the  spoils."  With  this 
principle  so  fixed  in  the  minds  of  his  supporters,  it  became 
an  interesting  question  how  Cleveland  would  meet  it.  No 
one  could  doubt  that  he  would  enforce  fairly  the  statute,  but 
would  he  content  himself  with  this  and  use  the  offices  not 
covered  by  the  act  to  reward  his  followers  in  the  old  Demo 
cratic  fashion?  An  avowed  civil  service  reformer,  and 
warmly  supported  by  independents  and  some  former  Re 
publicans  on  that  account,  he  justified  the  confidence  which 
they  had  reposed  in  him  and  refused  "to  make  a  clean 
sweep."  In  resisting  this  very  powerful  pressure  from  his 
party  he  accomplished  much  toward  the  establishment 
of  the  merit  system  in  the  civil  service.  It  is  true  that  he 
made  political  changes  gradually,  but  his  insistence  on  a  rule 


224  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

which  gained  him  time  for  reflection  in  making  appoint 
ments  was  of  marked  importance.  It  would  be  idle  to 
assert  that  in  his  two  terms  he  lived  wholly  up  to  the  ideal 
of  the  reformers;  undoubtedly  a  long  list  of  backslidings 
might  be  made  up,  but  in  striking  a  fair  balance  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  in  this  respect  his  administration  made 
for  righteousness.  All  the  more  credit  is  due  him  in  that  he 
not  only  resisted  personal  pressure,  but,  aspiring  to  be  a 
party  leader  for  the  carrying  out  of  a  cherished  policy  on 
finance  and  the  tariff,  he  made  more  difficult  the  accom 
plishment  of  these  ends  by  refusing  to  be  a  mere  partisan 
in  the  question  of  the  offices.  In  his  second  term  it  is 
alleged,  probably  with  truth,  that  he  made  a  skillful  use  of 
his  patronage  to  secure  the  passage  by  the  Senate  of  the 
repeal  of  the  Silver  Act  of  1890,  which  repeal  had  gone  easily 
through  the  House.  It  seemed  to  him  and  to  many  finan 
ciers  that  unless  this  large  purchase  of  silver  bullion  should 
be  stopped  the  country  would  be  forced  on  to  a  silver  basis, 
the  existing  financial  panic  would  be  grievously  intensified, 
and  the  road  back  to  the  sound  money  basis  of  the  rest  of 
the  civilized  world  would  be  long  and  arduous.  His  course 
is  defended  as  doing  a  little  wrong  in  order  to  bring  about 
a  great  right;  and  the  sequence  of  events  has  justified  that 
defense.  Harm  was  done  to  the  cause  of  Civil  Service 
Reform,  but  probably  no  permanent  injury.  The  repeal  of 
the  Silver  Act  of  1890  was  the  first  important  step  in 
the  direction  of  insuring  a  permanent  gold  standard,  and 
Grover  Cleveland  is  the  hero  of  it. 

The  presidential  office  gained  in  strength  during  Cleve 
land's  two  terms.  As  we  look  back  upon  them,  the  Presi 
dent  is  the  central  figure  round  which  revolves  each  policy 
and  its  success  or  failure.  At  the  same  time,  it  is  his  party 
more  than  he  that  is  to  be  blamed  for  the  failures.  He 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  225 

made  a  distinct  move  toward  a  reduction  of  the  tariff,  and 
while  this  failed,  leaving  us  with  the  reactionary  result  of 
higher  duties  than  ever  before,  it  is  not  impossible  that  the 
words,  actions,  and  sacrifices  of  Cleveland  will  be  the  foun 
dation  of  a  new  tariff-reform  party.  Allusion  has  been 
made  to  his  soundness  on  finance.  His  course  in  this  re 
spect  was  unvarying.  Capitalists  and  financiers  can  take 
care  of  themselves,  no  matter  what  are  the  changes  in  the 
currency;  but  men  and  women  of  fixed  incomes,  pro 
fessors  of  colleges,  teachers  in  schools,  clergymen  and  min 
isters,  accountants  and  clerks  in  receipt  of  salaries,  and 
farmers  and  laborers  have  had  their  comfort  increased  and 
their  anxieties  lessened  by  the  adoption  of  the  gold  stand 
ard  ;  and  to  Cleveland,  as  one  of  the  pioneers  in  this  move 
ment  for  stability,  their  thanks  are  due. 

In  the  railroad  riots  of  1894  Cleveland,  under  the  advice 
of  his  able  Attorney-General,  made  a  precedent  in  the  way 
of  interference  for  the  supremacy  of  law  and  the  mainte 
nance  of  order.  The  Governor  of  Illinois  would  not  preserve 
order,  and  the  President  determined  that  at  all  hazards 
riotous  acts  must  be  suppressed  and  law  must  resume  its 
sway.  In  ordering  United  States  troops  to  the  scene  of  the 
disturbance  without  an  application  of  the  Legislature  or 
Governor  of  Illinois  he  accomplished  a  fresh  extension  of 
executive  power  without  an  infraction  of  the  Constitution. 

In  his  most  important  diplomatic  action  Cleveland  was  not 
so  happy  as  in  his  domestic  policy.  There  are  able  men 
experienced  in  diplomacy  who  defend  his  message  of  De 
cember  17,  1895,  to  Congress  in  regard  to  Venezuela,  and  the 
wisdom  of  that  action  is  still  a  mooted  question.  Yet  two 
facts  placed  in  juxtaposition  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
the  message  was  a  mistake.  It  contained  a  veiled  threat  of 
war  if  England  would  not  arbitrate  her  difference  with 

Q 


226  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Venezuela,  the  implication  being  that  the  stronger  power  was 
trying  to  browbeat  the  weaker  one.  Later  an  arbitration 
took  place,  the  award  of  which  was  a  compromise,  England 
gaining  more  than  Venezuela,  and  the  award  demonstrated 
that  England  had  not  been  as  extreme  and  unjust  in  her 
claim  as  had  been  Venezuela.  It  is  even  probable  that 
England  might  have  accepted,  as  the  result  of  negotiation, 
the  line  decided  on  by  the  arbitrators.  But,  to  the  credit  of 
Mr.  Cleveland  and  his  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  Olney,  it  must 
be  remembered  that  they  later  negotiated  a  treaty  "for  the 
arbitration  of  all  matters  in  difference  between  the  United 
States  and  Great  Britain,"  which  unfortunately  failed  of 
ratification  by  the  Senate. 

It  is  a  fair  charge  against  Cleveland  as  a  partisan  leader 
that,  while  he  led  a  strong  following  to  victory  in  1892,  he 
left  his  party  disorganized  in  1897.  But  it  fell  to  him  to 
decide  between  principle  and  party,  and  he  chose  principle. 
He  served  his  country  at  the  expense  of  his  party.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  Democrats  it  was  grievous  that  the  only 
man  under  whom  they  had  secured  victory  since  the  Civil 
War  should  leave  them  in  a  shattered  condition,  and  it  may 
be  a  question  whether  a  ruler  of  more  tact  could  not  have 
secured  his  ends  without  so  great  a  schism.  Those,  how 
ever,  to  whom  this  party  consideration  does  not  appeal  have 
no  difficulty  in  approving  Cleveland's  course.  It  is  un 
deniable  that  his  character  is  stamped  on  the  presidential 
office,  and  his  occupancy  of  it  is  a  distinct  mark  in  the  his 
tory  of  executive  power. 

Harrison  occupied  the  presidential  office  between  the  two 
terms  of  Cleveland,  and  although  a  positive  man,  left  no 
particular  impress  upon  the  office.  He  was  noted  for  his 
excellent  judicial  appointments,  and  he  had  undoubtedly 
a  high  standard  of  official  conduct  which  he  endeavored  to 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL    OFFICE  227 

live  up  to.  Cold  in  his  personal  bearing  he  did  not  attract 
friends,  and  he  was  not  popular  with  the  prominent  men  in 
his  own  party.  While  Cleveland  and  McKinley  were  de 
nounced  by  their  opponents,  Harrison  was  ridiculed;  but 
the  universal  respect  in  which  he  was  held  after  he  retired 
to  private  life  is  evidence  that  the  great  office  lost  no  dig 
nity  while  he  held  it.  During  his  term  Congress  overshad 
owed  the  executive  and  the  House  was  more  conspicuous 
than  the  Senate.  Thomas  B.  Reed  was  speaker  and  de 
veloped  the  power  of  that  office  to  an  extraordinary  extent. 
McKinley  was  the  leader  of  the  House  and  from  long  service 
in  that  body  had  become  an  efficient  leader.  The  election 
of  Harrison  was  interpreted  to  mean  that  the  country 
needed  a  higher  tariff,  and  McKinley  carried  through  the 
House  the  bill  which  is  known  by  his  name.  Among  the 
other  Representatives  Mr.  Lodge  was  prominent.  It  was 
not  an  uncommon  saying  at  that  time  that  the  House  was 
a  better  arena  for  the  rising  politician  than  the  Senate.  In 
addition  to  the  higher  tariff  the  country  apparently  wanted 
more  silver  and  a  determined  struggle  was  made  for  the 
free  coinage  of  silver  which  nearly  won  in  Congress.  In  the 
end,  however,  a  compromise  was  effected  by  Senator  Sher 
man  which  averted  free  silver  but  committed  the  country 
to  the  purchase  annually  of  an  enormous  amount  of  silver 
bullion  against  which  Treasury  notes  redeemable  in  coin 
were  issued.  This  was  the  Act  of  1890  which,  as  I  have 
mentioned,  was  repealed  under  Cleveland  in  1893.  It  is 
entirely  clear  from  the  sequence  of  events  that  the  Repub 
lican  party  as  a  party  should  have  opposed  the  purchase  of 
more  silver.  It  could  not  have  been  beaten  worse  than  it 
was  in  1892,  but  it  could  have  preserved  a  consistency  in 
principle  which,  when  the  tide  turned,  would  have  been  of 
political  value.  The  party  which  has  stuck  to  the  right 


228  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

principle  has  in  the  long  run  generally  been  rewarded  with 
power,  and  as  the  Republicans,  in  spite  of  certain  defections, 
had  been  the  party  of  sound  money  since  the  Civil  War, 
they  should  now  have  fought  cheap  money  under  the  guise 
of  unlimited  silver  as  they  had  before  under  the  guise  of  un 
limited  greenbacks.  But  the  leaders  thought  differently, 
and  from  their  own  point  of  view  their  course  was  natural. 
The  country  desired  more  silver.  Business  was  largely 
extended,  overtrading  was  the  rule.  Farmers  and  business 
men  were  straitened  for  money.  Economists,  statesmen, 
and  politicians  had  told  them  that,  as  their  trouble  had  come 
largely  from  the  demonetization  of  silver,  their  relief  lay  in 
bimetallism.  It  was  easy  to  argue  that  the  best  form  of 
bimetallism  was  the  free  coinage  of  gold  and  silver,  and  after 
the  panic  of  1893  this  delusion  grew,  but  the  strength  of  it 
was  hardly  appreciated  by  optimistic  men  in  the  East  until 
the  Democrats  made  it  the  chief  plank  in  the  platform  on 
which  they  fought  the  presidential  campaign  of  1896.  Nomi 
nating  an  orator  who  had  an  effective  manner  of  presenting 
his  arguments  to  hard-working  farmers  whose  farms  were 
mortgaged,  to  business  men  who  were  under  a  continued 
strain  to  meet  their  obligations,  and  to  laborers  out  of  em 
ployment,  it  seemed  for  two  or  three  months  as  if  the  party 
of  silver  and  discontent  might  carry  the  day.  After  some 
hesitation  the  Republicans  grappled  with  the  question  boldly, 
took  ground  against  free  silver,  and  with  some  modification 
declared  their  approval  of  the  gold  standard.  On  this 
issue  they  fought  the  campaign.  Their  able  and  adroit 
manager  was  quick  to  see,  after  the  issue  was  joined,  the  force 
of  the  principle  of  sound  money  and  started  a  remarkable 
campaign  of  education  by  issuing  speeches  and  articles  by 
the  millions  in  a  number  of  different  languages,  in  providing 
excellent  arguments  for  the  country  press,  and  in  convincing 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  229 

those  who  would  listen  only  to  arguments  of  sententious 
brevity  by  a  well-devised  circulation  of  "  nuggets  "  of  finan 
cial  wisdom.  McKinley  had  also  the  support  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  Independent  and  Democratic  press.  While 
financial  magnates  and  the  bankers  of  the  country  were 
alarmed  at  the  strength  of  the  Bryan  party,  and  felt  that 
its  defeat  was  necessary  to  financial  surety,  the  strength  of 
the  Republican  canvass  lay  in  the  fact  that  the  speakers  and 
writers  who  made  it  believed  sincerely  that  the  gold  standard 
would  conduce  to  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number. 
It  was  an  inspiring  canvass.  The  honest  advocacy  of  sound 
principle  won. 

Under  McKinley  the  Democratic  tariff  bill  was  super 
seded  by  the  Dingley  act,  which  on  dutiable  articles  is,  I 
believe,  the  highest  tariff  the  country  has  known.  The 
Republican  party  believes  sincerely  in  the  policy  of  protec 
tion,  and  the  country  undoubtedly  has  faith  in  it.  It  is 
attractive  to  those  who  allow  immediate  returns  to  obscure 
prospective  advantage,  and  if  a  majority  decides  whether 
or  not  a  political  and  economic  doctrine  is  sound,  it  has  a 
powerful  backing,  for  every  large  country  in  the  civilized 
world,  I  think,  except  England,  adheres  to  protection ;  and 
some  of  them  have  returned  to  it  after  trying  a  measure  of 
commercial  freedom.  McKinley  and  the  majority  of  Con 
gress  were  in  full  sympathy,  and  the  Dingley  act  had  the 
approval  of  the  administration.  .But  the  change  in  business 
conditions  which,  though  long  in  operation,  became  signally 
apparent  after  1893,  wrought  in  McKinley,  during  his  four 
and  a  half  years  of  office,  a  change  of  opinion.  Under  im 
proved  processes  and  economies  in  all  branches  of  manu 
factures  the  United  States  began  to  make  many  articles 
cheaper  than  any  other  country,  and  sought  foreign  markets 
for  its  surplus,  disputing  successfully  certain  open  marts 


230  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

with  England  and  Germany.  In  McKinley's  earlier  utter 
ances  the  home  market  is  the  dominating  feature;  in  his 
later  ones,  trade  with  foreign  countries.  In  his  last  speech 
at  Buffalo  he  gave  mature  expression  to  his  views,  which 
for  one  who  had  been  a  leader  of  protectionists  showed  him 
to  have  taken  advanced  ground.  "We  find  our  long-time 
principles  echoed,"  declared  the  Nation.  McKinley's  man 
ner  of  developing  foreign  trade  was  not  that  of  the  tariff 
reformers,  for  he  proposed  to  bring  this  about  by  a  variety 
of  reciprocity  treaties ;  but  it  was  important  that  he  recog 
nized  the  sound  economic  principle  that  if  we  are  to  sell  to 
foreign  countries  we  must  buy  from  them  also.  That 
McKinley  had  a  strong  hold  on  the  country  is  indisputable 
from  the  unanimous  renomination  by  his  party  and  his 
triumphant  reelection,  and  it  was  a  step  toward  commer 
cial  freedom  that  he  who  more  than  all  other  men  had  the 
ear  of  the  country  and  who  had  been  an  arch-protectionist 
should  advocate  the  exchange  of  commodities  with  foreign 
lands.  Economists  do  not  educate  the  mass  of  voters,  but 
men  like  McKinley  do,  and  these  sentences  of  his  were  read 
and  pondered  by  millions:  "A  system  which  provides  a 
mutual  exchange  of  commodities  is  manifestly  essential  to 
the  continued  and  healthful  growth  of  our  export  trade. 
We  must  not  repose  in  fancied  security  that  we  can  forever 
sell  everything  and  buy  little  or  nothing.  If  such  a  thing 
were  possible  it  would  not  be  best  for  us  or  for  those  with 
whom  we  deal."  It  is  useless  to  speculate  on  what  would 
have  been  the  result  had  McKinley  lived.  Those  who  con 
sidered  him  a  weak  President  aver  that  when  he  encountered 
opposition  in  Congress  from  interests  which  were  seemingly 
menaced,  he  would  have  yielded  and  abandoned  reciprocity. 
Others  believe  that  he  understood  the  question  thoroughly 
and  that  his  arguments  would  in  the  end  have  prevailed 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  231 

with  Congress ;  yielding,  perhaps,  in  points  of  detail  he  would 
have  secured  the  adoption  of  the  essential  part  of  his  policy. 

After  his  election  McKinley  became  a  believer  in  the  gold 
standard  and  urged  proper  legislation  upon  Congress.  It 
is  to  his  credit  and  to  that  of  Congress  that  on  March  14, 
1900,  a  bill  became  a  law  which  establishes  the  gold  standard 
and  puts  it  out  of  the  power  of  any  President  to  place  the 
country  upon  a  silver  basis  by  a  simple  direction  to  his 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  which  could  have  been  done  in 
1897.  As  it  has  turned  out,  it  was  fortunate  that  there  was 
no  undue  haste  in  this  financial  legislation.  A  better  act 
was  obtained  than  would  have  been  possible  in  the  first  two 
years  of  McKinley's  administration.  The  reaction  from  the 
crisis  following  the  panic  of  1893  had  arrived,  made  sure 
by  the  result  of  the  election  of  1896 ;  and  the  prosperity  had 
become  a  telling  argument  in  favor  of  the  gold  standard 
with  the  people  and  with  Congress. 

McKinley  was  essentially  adapted  for  a  peace  minister, 
but  under  him  came  war.  Opinions  of  him  will  differ,  not 
only  according  to  one's  sentiments  on  war  and  imperialism, 
but  according  to  one's  ideal  of  what  a  President  should  be. 
Let  us  make  a  comparison  which  shall  not  include  Wash 
ington,  for  the  reason  that  under  him  the  country  had  not 
become  the  pure  democracy  it  is  at  the  present  day.  Of 
such  a  democracy  it  seems  to  me  that  Lincoln  is  the  ideal 
President,  in  that  he  led  public  sentiment,  represented  it, 
and  followed  it.  "I  claim  not  to  have  controlled  events," 
he  said,  "but  confess  plainly  that  events  have  controlled 
me."  During  his  term  of  office  he  was  one  day  called  "very 
weak,"  and  the  next  "a  tyrant"  ;  but  when  his  whole  work 
was  done,  a  careful  survey  of  it  could  bring  one  only  to  the 
conclusion  that  he  knew  when  to  follow  and  when  to  lead. 
He  was  in  complete  touch  with  popular  sentiment,  and 


232  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

divined  with  nicety  when  he  could  take  a  step  in  advance. 
He  made  an  effort  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  Congress,  and 
he  differed  with  that  body  reluctantly,  although,  when  the 
necessity  came,  decisively.  While  he  had  consideration 
for  those  who  did  not  agree  with  him,  and  while  he  acted 
always  with  a  regard  to  proportion,  he  was  nevertheless  a 
strong  and  self-confident  executive.  Now  Cleveland  did 
not  comprehend  popular  opinion  as  did  Lincoln.  In  him 
the  desire  to  lead  was  paramount,  to  the  exclusion  at  times 
of  a  proper  consideration  for  Congress  and  the  people.  It 
has  been  said  by  one  of  his  political  friends  that  he  used  the 
same  energy  and  force  in  deciding  a  small  matter  as  a  great 
one,  and  he  alienated  senators,  congressmen,  and  other 
supporters  by  an  unyielding  disposition  when  no  principle 
was  involved.  He  did  not  possess  the  gracious  quality  of 
Lincoln,  who  yielded  in  small  things  that  he  might  prevail 
in  great  ones.  Yet  for  this  quality  of  sturdy  insistence  on 
his  own  idea  Cleveland  has  won  admiration  from  a  vast 
number  of  independent  thinkers.  Temperaments  such  as 
these  are  not  in  sympathy  with  McKinley,  who  represents 
another  phase  of  Lincoln's  genius.  The  controlling  idea  of 
McKinley  probably  was  that  as  he  was  elected  by  the  people 
he  should  represent  them.  He  did  not  believe  that,  if  a 
matter  were  fully  and  fairly  presented,  the  people  would 
go  wrong.  At  times  he  felt  he  should  wait  for  their  sober, 
second  thought,  but  if,  after  due  consideration,  the  people 
spoke,  it  was  his  duty  to  carry  out  their  will.  Unques 
tionably  if  the  Cleveland  and  McKinley  qualities  can  be 
happily  combined  as  they  were  in  Lincoln,  the  nearest  pos 
sible  approach  to  the  ideal  ruler  is  the  result.  One  Lincoln, 
though,  in  a  century,  is  all  that  any  country  can  expect: 
and  there  is  a  place  in  our  polity  for  either  the  Cleveland  or 
the  McKinley  type  of  executive.  So  it  seemed  to  the  makers 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  233 

of  the  Constitution.  "The  republican  principle,"  wrote 
Hamilton  in  the  Federalist,  "  demands  that  the  deliberate 
sense  of  the  community  should  govern  the  conduct  of  those 
to  whom  they  intrust  the  management  of  their  affairs." 
"But,"  he  said  in  the  same  essay,  " however  inclined  we 
might  be  to  insist  upon  an  unbounded  complaisance  in  the 
executive  to  the  inclinations  of  the  people,  we  can  with  no 
propriety  contend  for  a  like  complaisance  to  the  humors  of 
the  legislature.  .  .  .  The  executive  should  be  in  a  situa 
tion  to  dare  to  act  his  own  opinion  with  vigor  and  decision." 
It  is  frequently  remarked  that  no  President  since  Lincoln 
had  so  thorough  a  comprehension  of  public  sentiment  as 
McKinley.  This  knowledge  and  his  theory  of  action,  if  I 
have  divined  it  aright,  are  an  explanation  of  his  course  in 
regard  to  the  Spanish  War  and  the  taking  of  the  Philippines. 
It  does  not  fall  to  me  to  discuss  in  this  article  these  two  ques 
tions,  nor  do  I  feel  certain  that  all  the  documents  necessary 
to  a  fair  judgment  are  accessible  to  the  public,  but  I  can 
show  what  was  McKinley's  attitude  toward  them  by  report 
ing  a  confidential  conversation  he  had  on  May  2,  1899,  with 
Mr.  Henry  S.  Pritchett,  president  of  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology,  who  made  a  record  of  it  the  day 
afterward.  The  President,  Mr.  Pritchett  relates,  spoke  of 
the  "war  and  of  his  own  responsibility,  and  the  way  in 
which  he  has  gradually  come  to  have  his  present  position 
with  respect  to  the  Philippines.  The  talk  was  started  by 
my  reminding  him  of  the  fact  that  just  a  year  ago  that  morn 
ing,  on  May  2,  1898,  I  had  come  into  his  room  with  a  map 
of  Manila  and  Cavite  on  a  large  scale  —  the  first  time  he  had 
seen  such  a  map  —  and  from  this  he  drifted  into  a  most 
serious  and  interesting  talk  of  his  own  place  in  the  history  of 
the  past  twelve  months.  He  described  his  efforts  to  avert 
the  war,  how  he  had  carried  the  effort  to  the  point  of  rup- 


234  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

ture  with  his  party,  then  came  the  Maine  incident,  and, 
finally,  a  declaration  of  war  over  all  efforts  to  stem  the  tide. 
Then  he  spoke  of  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines, 
related  at  some  length  the  correspondence  he  had  had  with 
the  Paris  Commission,  how  he  had  been  gradually  made  to 
feel  in  his  struggling  for  the  right  ground  that  first  Luzon 
and  finally  all  the  Philippines  must  be  kept.  He  then  went 
on  to  indicate  his  belief  that  Providence  had  led  in  all  this 
matter,  that  to  him  the  march  of  events  had  been  so  irresis 
tible  that  nothing  could  turn  them  aside.  Nobody,  he  said, 
could  have  tried  harder  than  he  to  be  rid  of  the  burden  of 
the  Philippines,  and  yet  the  trend  of  events  had  been  such 
that  it  seemed  impossible  to  escape  this  duty.  He  finally 
came  to  speak  with  more  emotion  than  I  have  ever  seen  him 
exhibit,  and  no  one  could  doubt  the  sincerity  of  the  man.7' 

Of  McKinley's  achievements  in  the  field  of  diplomacy 
Secretary  Hay  in  his  memorial  address  spoke  with  knowl 
edge  and  in  words  of  high  praise.  Sometimes  the  expression 
of  a  careful  foreign  observer  anticipates  the  judgment  of 
posterity,  and  with  that  view  the  words  of  the  Spectator,1 
in  an  article  on  the  presidential  election  of  1900,  are  worth 
quoting:  "We  believe  that  Mr.  McKinley  and  the  wise 
statesman  who  is  his  Secretary  of  State,  Colonel  Hay,  are 
administrators  of  a  high  order.  They  have  learnt  their 
business  thoroughly,  hold  all  the  strings  of  policy  in  their 
hands." 

Opinions  will  differ  as  to  the  impress  McKinley  has  left 
on  the  presidential  office.  It  is  the  judgment  of  two  men  of 
large  knowledge  of  American  history  and  present  affairs 
that  no  President  since  Jefferson  has  been  so  successful  in 
getting  Congress  to  adopt  the  positive  measures  he  desired. 

Of  the  administration  of  Theodore  Roosevelt  it  would  be 
1  July  14,  1900. 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  235 

neither  proper  nor  wise  for  me  to  speak  in  other  terms  than 
those  of  expectation  and  prophecy.  But  of  Mr.  Roosevelt 
himself  something  may  be  said.  His  birth,  breeding,  edu 
cation,  and  social  advantages  have  been  of  the  best.  He  has 
led  an  industrious  and  useful  life.  As  an  American  citizen 
we  are  all  proud  of  him,  and  when  he  reached  the  presi 
dential  office  by  a  tragedy  that  nobody  deplored  more  than 
he,  every  one  wished  him  success.  His  transparent  honesty 
and  sincerity  are  winning  qualities,  and  in  the  opinion  of 
Burke  especially  important  in  him  who  is  the  ruler  of  a  na 
tion.  "  Plain  good  intention,"  he  wrote,  "  which  is  as  easily 
discovered  at  the  first  view  as  fraud  is  surely  detected  at 
last,  is,  let  me  say,  of  no  mean  force  in  the  government  of 
mankind."  To  these  qualities,  and  to  a  physical  and  moral 
courage  that  can  never  be  questioned,  Mr.  Roosevelt  adds 
a  large  intelligence  and,  as  his  books  show,  a  power  of  com 
bination  of  ideas  and  cohesive  thought.  Moreover,  he  has 
had  a  good  political  training,  and  he  has  the  faculty  of 
writing  his  political  papers  in  a  pregnant  and  forcible  literary 
style.  He  is  fit  for  what  Mr.  Bryce  calls  "the  greatest  office 
in  the  world,  unless  we  except  the  Papacy."  His  ideals  are 
Washington  and  Lincoln.  "I  like  to  see  in  my  mind's  eye," 
he  said,  "the  gaunt  form  of  Lincoln  stalking  through  these 
halls."  "To  gratify  the  hopes,  secure  the  reverence,  and 
sustain  the  dignity  of  the  nation,"  said  Justice  Story,  "the 
presidential  office  should  always  be  occupied  by  a  man  of 
elevated  talents,  of  ripe  virtues,  of  incorruptible  integrity, 
and  of  tried  patriotism ;  one  who  shall  forget  his  own  inter 
ests  and  remember  that  he  represents  not  a  party  but  the 
whole  nation."  These  qualities  Theodore  Roosevelt  has. 
Whether  he  shall  in  action  carry  out  the  other  requirements 
of  Justice  Story  may  only  be  judged  after  he  shall  have 
retired  to  private  life. 


236  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Mr.  Roosevelt  merits  the  encouragement  and  sympathy 
of  all  lovers  of  good  government,  and  he  is  entitled,  as 
indeed  is  every  President,  to  considerate  and  forbearing 
criticism.  For,  ardently  desired  as  the  office  is,  it  is  a  hard 
place  to  fill.  Through  the  kindness  of  President  Roosevelt, 
I  have  been  enabled  to  observe  the  daily  routine  of  his  work, 
and  I  am  free  to  say  that  from  the  business  point  of  view, 
no  man  better  earns  his  pay  than  does  he.  Mr.  Bryce  re 
marks  that  a  good  deal  of  the  President's  work  is  like  that 
of  the  manager  of  a  railway.  So  far  as  concerns  the  con 
sultation  with  heads  of  departments,  prompt  decisions, 
and  the  disposition  of  daily  matters,  the  comparison  is  apt, 
if  a  great  American  railway  and  a  manager  like  Thomas  A. 
Scott  are  borne  in  mind.  But  the  railway  manager's 
labor  is  done  in  comparative  privacy,  he  can  be  free  from 
interruption  and  dispose  of  his  own  time  in  a  systematic 
manner.  That  is  impossible  for  the  President  during  the 
session  of  Congress.  Office-seekers  themselves  do  not 
trouble  the  President  so  much  as  in  former  days ;  they  may 
be  referred  to  the  heads  of  the  departments ;  and,  moreover, 
the  introduction  of  competitive  examinations  and  the  merit 
system  has  operated  as  a  relief  to  the  President  and  his 
Cabinet  officers.  But  hearing  the  recommendations  by 
senators  and  congressmen  of  their  friends  for  offices  con 
sumes  a  large  amount  of  time.  There  are,  as  Senator  Lodge 
has  kindly  informed  me,  4818  presidential  offices  exclusive 
of  4000  presidential  post  offices;  in  addition  there  are 
army  and  naval  officers  to  be  appointed.  The  proper  selec 
tion  in  four  years  of  the  number  of  men  these  figures  imply 
is  in  itself  no  small  labor;  it  would  by  a  railway  manager 
be  considered  an  onerous  and  exacting  business.  But  the 
railway  manager  may  hear  the  claims  of  applicants  in  his 
own  proper  way,  and  to  prevent  encroachments  on  his  time 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  237 

may  give  the  candidates  or  their  friends  a  curt  dismissal. 
The  President  may  not  treat  senators  and  representatives 
in  that  manner,  nor  would  he  desire  to  do  so,  for  the  inter 
course  between  them  and  the  executive  is  of  great  value. 
"The  President,"  wrote  John  Sherman,  " should  ' touch 
elbows'  with  Congress."  There  are  important  legislative 
measures  to  be  discussed  in  a  frank  interchange  of  opinion. 
Senators  and  representatives  are  a  guide  to  the  President 
in  their  estimates  of  public  sentiment;  often  they  exert 
an  influence  over  him,  and  he  is  dependent  on  them  for  the 
carrying  out  of  any  policy  he  may  have  at  heart.  While 
the  encroachments  on  the  President's  time  are  great,  I  am 
convinced  that  no  plan  should  be  adopted  which  should 
curtail  the  unconventional  and  frank  interchange  of  views 
between  the  President  and  members  of  the  National  Legis 
lature.  The  relief  lies  with  the  public.  Much  of  the  Presi 
dent's  time  is  taken  up  with  receptions  of  the  friends  of 
senators  and  representatives,  of  members  of  conventions 
and  learned  bodies  meeting  in  Washington,  of  deputations 
of  school-teachers  and  the  like  who  have  gone  to  the  capital 
for  a  holiday:  all  desire  to  pay  their  respects  to  the  Chief 
Magistrate.  Undoubtedly,  if  he  could  have  a  quiet  talk 
with  most  of  these  people,  it  would  be  of  value,  but  the  con 
ventional  shaking  of  hands  and  the  "I  am  glad  to  see  you" 
is  not  a  satisfaction  great  enough  to  the  recipients  to  pay 
for  what  it  costs  the  President  in  time  and  the  expenditure 
of  nervous  force.  He  should  have  time  for  deliberation. 
The  railway  manager  can  closet  himself  when  he  likes: 
that  should  be  the  privilege  of  the  President ;  yet  on  a  cer 
tain  day  last  April,  when  he  wished  to  have  a  long  confi 
dential  talk  with  his  Secretary  of  War,  this  was  only  to  be 
contrived  by  the  two  taking  a  long  horseback  ride  in  the 
country.  It  is  difficult  for  the  President  to  refuse  to  see 


238  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

these  good,  patriotic,  and  learned  people ;  and  senators  and 
representatives  like  to  gratify  their  constituents.  The 
remedy  lies  with  the  public  in  denying  themselves  this 
pleasant  feature  of  a  visit  to  Washington.  One  does  not 
call  on  the  president  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  or  the 
president  of  the  New  York  Central  Railroad  in  business 
hours  unless  for  business  purposes;  and  this  should  be  the 
rule  observed  by  citizens  of  the  United  States  toward  the 
President.  The  weekly  public  receptions  are  no  longer 
held.  All  these  other  receptions  and  calls  simply  for  shak 
ing  hands  and  wishing  him  God-speed  should  no  longer  be 
asked  for.  For  the  President  has  larger  and  more  serious 
work  than  the  railway  manager  and  should  have  at  least  as 
much  time  for  thought  and  deliberation. 

Moreover,  the  work  of  the  railway  manager  is  done  in 
secret.  Fiercer  by  far  than  the  light  which  beats  upon  the 
throne  is  that  which  beats  upon  the  White  House.  The 
people  are  eager  to  know  the  President's  thoughts  and  plans, 
and  an  insistent  press  endeavors  to  satisfy  them.  Consid 
ering  the  conditions  under  which  the  President  does  his 
work,  the  wonder  is  not  that  he  makes  so  many  mistakes, 
but  that  he  makes  so  few.  There  is  no  railway  or  business 
manager  or  college  president  who  has  not  more  time  to  him 
self  for  the  reflection  necessary  to  the  maturing  of  large  and 
correct  policies.  I  chanced  to  be  in  the  President's  room 
when  he  dictated  the  rough  draft  of  his  famous  dispatch  to 
General  Chaffee  respecting  torture  in  the  Philippines.  While 
he  was  dictating,  two  or  three  cards  were  brought  in,  also 
some  books  with  a  request  for  the  President's  autograph, 
and  there  were  some  other  interruptions.  While  the  dis 
patch  as  it  went  out  in  its  revised  form  could  not  be  im 
proved,  a  President  cannot  expect  to  be  always  so  happy 
in  dictating  dispatches  in  the  midst  of  distractions.  Office 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL   OFFICE  239 

work  of  far-reaching  importance  should  be  done  in  the  closet. 
Certainly  no  monarch  or  minister  in  Europe  does  adminis 
trative  work  under  such  unfavorable  conditions;  indeed, 
this  public  which  exacts  so  much  of  the  President's  time 
should  in  all  fairness  be  considerate  in  its  criticism. 

No  one,  I  think,  would  care  to  have  abated  the  fearless 
political  criticism  which  has  in  this  country  and  in  England 
attained  to  the  highest  point  ever  reached.  From  the  nature 
of  things  the  press  must  comment  promptly  and  without 
the  full  knowledge  of  conditions  that  might  alter  its  judg 
ments.  But  on  account  of  the  necessary  haste  of  its  ex 
pressions,  the  writers  should  avoid  extravagant  language  and 
the  too  ready  imputation  of  bad  motives  to  the  public  serv 
ants.  "It  is  strange  that  men  cannot  allow  others  to  differ 
with  them  without  charging  corruption  as  the  cause  of  the 
difference,"  are  the  plaintive  words  of  Grant  during  a  con 
fidential  conversation  with  his  Secretary  of  State. 

The  contrast  between  the  savage  criticism  of  Cleveland 
and  Harrison  while  each  occupied  the  presidential  chair 
and  the  respect  each  enjoyed  from  political  opponents  after 
retiring  to  private  life  is  an  effective  illustration  of  the  lesson 
I  should  like  to  teach.  At  the  time  of  Harrison's  death 
people  spoke  from  their  hearts  and  said,  "Well  done,  good 
and  faithful  servant."  A  fine  example  of  political  criticism 
in  a  time  of  great  excitement  were  two  articles  by  Mr.  Carl 
Schurz  in  Harper's  Weekly  during  the  Venezuela  crisis. 
Mr.  Schurz  was  a  supporter  and  political  friend  of  Cleveland, 
but  condemned  his  Venezuela  message.  In  the  articles  to 
which  I  refer  he  was  charitable  in  feeling  and  moderate  in 
tone,  and  though  at  the  time  I  heard  the  term  "wishy- 
washy"  applied  to  one  of  them,  I  suspect  that  Mr.  Schurz 
now  looks  back  with  satisfaction  to  his  reserve;  and  those 
of  us  who  used  more  forcible  language  in  regard  to  the 


240  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

same  incident  may  well  wish  that  we  had  emulated  his 
moderation. 

The  presidential  office  differs  from  all  other  political 
offices  in  the  world,  and  has  justified  the  hopes  of  its  crea 
tors.  It  has  not  realized  their  fears,  one  of  which  was  ex 
pressed  by  Hamilton  in  the  Federalist.  "A  man  raised  from 
the  station  of  a  private  citizen  to  the  rank  of  Chief  Magis 
trate,"  he  wrote,  "  possessed  of  a  moderate  or  slender  for 
tune,  and  looking  forward  to  a  period  not  very  remote,  when 
he  may  probably  be  obliged  to  return  to  the  station  from 
which  he  was  taken,  might  sometimes  be  under  temptations 
to  sacrifice  his  duty  to  his  interest,  which  it  would  require 
superlative  virtue  to  withstand.  An  avaricious  man  might 
be  tempted  to  betray  the  interests  of  the  state  to  the  ac 
quisition  of  wealth.  An  ambitious  man  might  make  his 
own  aggrandizement,  by  the  aid  of  a  foreign  power,  the 
price  of  his  treachery  to  his  constituents."  1  From  dangers 
of  this  sort  the  political  virtue  which  we  inherited  from  our 
English  ancestors  has  preserved  us.  We  may  fairly  main 
tain  that  the  creation  and  administration  of  our  presiden 
tial  office  have  added  something  to  political  history,  and 
when  we  contrast  in  character  and  ability  the  men  who  have 
filled  it  with  the  monarchs  of  England  and  of  France,  we 
may  have  a  feeling  of  just  pride.  Mr.  Bryce  makes  a  sug 
gestive  comparison  in  ability  of  our  Presidents  to  the 
prime  ministers  of  England,  awarding  the  palm  to  the 
Englishmen,2  and  from  his  large  knowledge  of  both  coun 
tries  and  impartial  judgment  we  may  readily  accept  his 
conclusion.  It  is,  however,  a  merit  of  our  Constitution  that 
as  great  ability  is  not  required  for  its  chief  executive  office 
as  is  demanded  in  England.  The  prime  minister  must  have 

1  See  also  the  Federalist  (Lodge's  edition),  452.  Bryce,  Studies  in  History 
and  Jurisprudence,  308.  2  American  Commonwealth,  I,  80. 


THE  PRESIDENTIAL  OFFICE  241 

a  talent  for  both  administration  and  debate,  which  is  a 
rare  combination  of  powers,  and  if  he  be  chosen  from  the 
House  of  Commons,  it  may  happen  that  too  much  stress  will 
be  laid  upon  oratory,  or  the  power  of  making  ready  replies 
to  the  attacks  of  the  opposition.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive 
of  Washington  defending  his  policy  in  the  House  or  the  Sen 
ate  from  a  fire  of  questions  and  cross-questions.  Lincoln 
might  have  developed  this  quality  of  a  prime  minister,  but 
his  replies  and  sallies  of  wit  to  put  to  confusion  his  oppo 
nents  would  have  lacked  the  dignity  his  state  papers 
and  confidential  letters  possess.  Hayes  and  Cleveland  were 
excellent  administrators,  but  neither  could  have  reached 
his  high  position  had  the  debating  ability  of  a  prime  min 
ister  been  required.  On  the  other  hand,  Garfield,  Harrison, 
and  McKinley  would  have  been  effective  speakers  in  either 
the  House  or  the  Senate. 

An  American  may  judge  his  own  country  best  from  Eu 
ropean  soil,  impregnated  as  he  there  is  with  European  ideas. 
Twice  have  I  been  in  Europe  during  Cleveland's  administra 
tion,  twice  during  McKinley's,  once  during  Roosevelt's. 
During  the  natural  process  of  comparison,  when  one  must 
recognize  in  many  things  the  distinct  superiority  of  Eng 
land,  Germany,  and  France,  I  have  never  had  a  feeling  other 
than  high  respect  for  each  one  of  these  Presidents;  and 
taking  it  by  and  large,  in  the  endeavor  to  consider  fairly 
the  hits  and  misses  of  all,  I  have  never  had  any  reason  to 
feel  that  the  conduct  of  our  national  government  has  been 
inferior  to  that  of  any  one  of  these  highly  civilized  powers. 


A  REVIEW   OF  PRESIDENT   HAYES'S  ADMINIS 
TRATION 

Address  delivered  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Graduate  School  of 
Arts  and  Sciences,  and  the  Graduate  Schools  of  Applied  Science 
and  Business  Administration,  Harvard  University,  on  October  8, 
1908 ;  printed  in  the  Century  Magazine  for  October,  1909. 


A  REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINIS 
TRATION 

MANY  of  our  Presidents  have  been  inaugurated  under 
curious  and  trying  circumstances,  but  no  one  of  them  ex 
cept  Hayes  has  taken  the  oath  of  office  when  there  was  a 
cloud  on  his  title.  Every  man  who  had  voted  for  Tilden,  — 
whose  popular  vote  exceeded  that  of  Hayes  by  264,000,  — 
believed  that  Hayes  had  reached  his  high  place  by  means  of 
fraud.  Indeed,  some  of  the  Hayes  voters  shared  this  belief, 
and  stigmatized  as  monstrous  the  action  of  the  Louisiana 
returning  board  in  awarding  the  electoral  vote  of  Louisiana 
to  Hayes.  The  four  men,  three  of  them  dishonest  and  the 
fourth  incompetent,  who  constituted  this  returning  board, 
rejected,  on  the  ground  of  intimidation  of  negro  voters, 
eleven  thousand  votes  that  had  been  cast  in  due  form  for 
Tilden.  In  the  seventh  volume  of  my  history  I  have  told 
the  story  of  the  compromise  in  the  form  of  the  Electoral 
Commission  which  passed  on  the  conflicting  claims  and  ad 
judged  the  votes  of  the  disputed  states,  notably  Florida 
and  Louisiana,  to  Hayes,  giving  him  a  majority  of  one  in 
the  electoral  college,  thus  making  him  President.  When 
the  count  was  completed  and  the  usual  declaration  made, 
Hayes  had  no  choice  but  to  abide  by  the  decision.  Duty 
to  his  country  and  to  his  party,  the  Republican,  required 
his  acceptance  of  the  office,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  think 
ing  that  he  had  any  doubts  regarding  his  proper  course. 
His  legal  title  was  perfect,  but  his  moral  title  was  unsound, 
and  it  added  to  the  difficulty  of  his  situation  that  the  oppo 
sition,  the  Democrats,  had  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Rep- 

245 


246  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

resentatives.  None  but  a  determined  optimist  could  have 
predicted  anything  but  failure  for  an  administration  begin 
ning  under  such  conditions. 

Hayes  was  an  Ohio  man,  and  we  in  Ohio  now  watched 
his  successive  steps  with  keen  interest.  We  knew  him  as  a 
man  of  high  character,  with  a  fine  sense  of  honor,  but  we 
placed  no  great  faith  in  his  ability.  He  had  added  to  his 
reputation  by  the  political  campaign  that  he  had  made  for 
governor,  in  1875,  against  the  Democrats  under  William 
Allen,  who  demanded  an  inflation  of  the  greenback  currency. 
He  took  an  uncompromising  stand  for  sound  money,  al 
though  that  cause  was  unpopular  in  Ohio,  and  he  spoke  from 
the  stump  unremittingly  and  fearlessly,  although  over 
shadowed  by  the  greater  ability  and  power  of  expression  of 
Senator  Sherman  and  of  Carl  Schurz,  who  did  yeoman's 
service  for  the  Republicans  in  this  campaign.  Senator 
Sherman  had  suggested  Hayes  as  candidate  for  President, 
and  the  nomination  by  the  Republican  national  convention 
had  come  to  him  in  June,  1876.  While  his  letter  of  accept 
ance  may  not  have  surprised  his  intimate  friends,  it  was  a 
revelation  to  most  of  us  from  its  outspoken  and  common- 
sense  advocacy  of  civil  service  reform,  and  it  gave  us  the 
first  glimmering  that  in  Rutherford  B.  Hayes  the  Republi 
cans  had  for  standard  bearer  a  man  of  more  than  respect 
able  ability. 

His  inaugural  address  confirmed  this  impression.  He 
spoke  with  dignity  and  sympathy  of  the  disputed  Presi 
dency,  promised  a  liberal  policy  toward  the  Southern  states, 
and  declared  that  a  reform  in  our  civil  service  was  a 
"  paramount  necessity."  He  chose  for  his  Cabinet  men  in 
sympathy  with  his  high  ideals.  William  M.  Evarts,  the  Sec 
retary  of  State,  was  one  of  the  ablest  lawyers  in  the 
country.  He  had  been  one  of  the  leading  counsel  in  the 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     247 

defense  of  President  Johnson  in  the  impeachment  trial, 
and  had  managed  the  Republican  cause  before  the  Elec 
toral  Commission  with  adroitness  and  zeal.  John  Sherman, 
the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  was  the  most  capable  finan 
cier  in  public  life.  Carl  Schurz,  the  Secretary  of  the  In 
terior,  was  an  aggressive  and  uncompromising  reformer, 
who  had  served  the  Republican  party  well  in  the  campaigns 
of  1875  and  1876.  If  these  three  men  could  work  together 
under  Hayes,  the  United  States  need  envy  the  governors  of 
no  other  country.  They  were  in  the  brilliant  but  solid 
class,  were  abreast  of  the  best  thought  of  their  time,  had  a 
solemn  sense  of  duty,  and  believed  in  righteous  government. 
Devens,  the  Attorney-General,  had  served  with  credit  in  the 
army  and  had  held  the  honorable  position  of  Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Judicial  Court  of  Massachusetts.  Thompson  of 
Indiana,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  was  a  political  appoint 
ment  due  to  the  influence  of  Senator  Morton,  but,  all  things 
considered,  it  was  not  a  bad  choice.  McCrary  of  Iowa,  as 
Secretary  of  War,  had  been  a  useful  member  of  the  House 
of  Representatives.  The  Postmaster-General  was  Key  of 
Tennessee,  who  had  served  in  the  Confederate  army  and 
voted  for  Tilden.  This  appointment  was  not  so  genuine  a 
recognition  of  the  South  as  would  have  been  made  if  Hayes 
could  have  carried  out  his  first  intention,  which  was  the  ap 
pointment  of  General  Joseph  E.  Johnston  as  Secretary  of 
War.  Considering  that  Johnston  had  surrendered  the  second 
great  army  of  the  Confederacy  only  twelve  years  before,  the 
thought  was  possible  only  to  a  magnanimous  nature,  and  in 
the  inner  circle  of  Hayes's  counselors  obvious  and  grave 
objections  were  urged.  General  Sherman  doubted  the  wis 
dom  of  the  proposed  appointment,  although  he  said  that  as 
General  of  the  army  he  would  be  entirely  content  to  receive 
the  President's  orders  through  his  old  antagonist.  Although 


248  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  appointment  of  Johnston  would  have  added  strength, 
the  Cabinet  as  finally  made  up  was  strong,  and  the  selection 
of  such  advisers  created  a  favorable  impression  upon  the  in 
telligent  sentiment  of  the  country ;  it  was  spoken  of  as  the 
ablest  Cabinet  since  Washington's. 

A  wise  inaugural  address  and  an  able  Cabinet  made  a  good 
beginning,  but  before  the  harmonious  cooperation  of  these 
extraordinary  men  could  be  developed  a  weighty  question, 
which  brooked  no  delay,  had  to  be  settled.  The  Stevens- 
Sumner  plan  of  the  reconstruction  of  the  South  on  the  basis 
of  universal  negro  suffrage  and  military  support  of  the  gov 
ernments  thus  constituted  had  failed.  One  by  one  in 
various  ways  the  Southern  states  had  recovered  home  rule 
until,  on  the  inauguration  of  Hayes,  carpet-bag  negro  gov 
ernments  existed  in  only  two  states,  South  Carolina  and 
Louisiana.  In  both  of  these  the  Democrats  maintained 
that  their  candidates  for  governor  had  been  lawfully  elected. 
The  case  of  South  Carolina  presented  no  serious  difficulty. 
Hayes  electors  had  been  rightfully  chosen,  and  so  had  the 
Democratic  governor,  Hampton.  But  Chamberlain,  the 
Republican  candidate,  had  a  claim  based  on  the  exclusion 
of  the  votes  of  two  counties  by  the  board  of  state  canvassers. 
After  conferences  between  each  of  the  claimants  and  the 
President,  the  question  was  settled  in  favor  of  the  Democrat, 
which  was  the  meaning  of  the  withdrawal  of  the  United 
States  troops  from  the  State  House  in  Columbia. 

The  case  of  Louisiana  was  much  more  troublesome. 
Packard,  the  Republican  candidate  for  governor,  had  re 
ceived  as  many  votes  as  Hayes,  and  logic  seemed  to  require 
that,  if  Hayes  be  President,  Packard  should  be  governor. 
While  the  question  was  pending,  Elaine  said  in  the  Senate : 
"You  discredit  Packard,  and  you  discredit  Hayes.  You 
hold  that  Packard  is  not  the  legal  governor  of  Louisiana, 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION    249 

and  President  Hayes  has  no  title."  And  the  other  leaders 
of  the  Republican  party,  for  the  most  part,  held  this  view. 
To  these  and  their  followers  Elaine  applied  the  name  "  Stal 
warts/  '  stiff  partisans,  who  did  not  believe  in  surrendering 
the  hold  of  the  Republicans  on  the  Southern  states. 

Between  the  policies  of  a  continuance  of  the  support  of 
the  Republican  party  in  Louisiana  or  its  withdrawal,  a  weak 
man  would  have  allowed  things  to  drift,  while  a  strong  man 
of  the  Conkling  and  Chandler  type  would  have  sustained  the 
Packard  government  with  the  whole  force  at  his  command. 
Hayes  acted  slowly  and  cautiously,  asked  for  and  received 
much  good  counsel,  and  in  the  end  determined  to  withdraw 
the  United  States  troops  from  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the 
State  House  in  Louisiana.  The  Packard  government  fell, 
and  the  Democrats  took  possession.  The  lawyers  could 
furnish  cogent  reasons  why  Packard  was  not  entitled  to  the 
governorship,  although  the  electoral  vote  of  Louisiana  had 
been  counted  for  Hayes;  but  the  Stalwarts  maintained 
that  no  legal  quibble  could  varnish  over  so  glaring  an  in 
consistency.  Indeed,  it  was  one  of  those  illogical  acts,  so 
numerous  in  English  and  American  history,  that  resolve 
difficulties,  when  a  rigid  adherence  to  logic  would  tend  to 
foment  trouble. 

The  inaugural  address  and  the  distinctively  reform  Cabi 
net  did  not  suit  the  party  workers,  and  when  the  President 
declined  to  sustain  the  Packard  government  in  Louisiana, 
disapproval  was  succeeded  by  rage.  In  six  weeks  after  his 
inauguration  Hayes  was  without  a  party;  that  is  to  say, 
the  men  who  carried  on  the  organization  were  bitterly  op 
posed  to  his  policy,  and  they  made  much  more  noise  than 
the  independent  thinking  voters  who  believed  that  a  man 
had  arisen  after  their  own  hearts.  Except  from  the  South 
ern  wing,  he  received  little  sympathy  from  the  Democratic 


250  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

party.  In  their  parlance,  fraud  was  written  on  his  brow. 
He  had  the  honor  and  perquisites  of  office  which  were  right 
fully  theirs. 

Once  the  troops  were  withdrawn  from  South  Carolina  and 
Louisiana,  no  backward  step  was  possible,  and  although 
Hayes  would  have  liked  congressional  support  and  sympathy 
for  his  act,  this  was  not  necessary.  The  next  most  impor 
tant  question  of  his  administration  related  to  finance.  He 
and  his  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  would  have  been  gratified 
by  an  obedient  majority  in  Congress  at  their  back.  Presi 
dents  before  and  after  Hayes  have  made  a  greater  or  less 
employment  of  their  patronage  to  secure  the  passage  of 
their  favorite  measures,  but  Hayes  immediately  relinquished 
that  power  by  taking  a  decided  position  for  a  civil  service 
based  on  merit.  In  a  little  over  a  month  after  the  with 
drawal  of  the  troops  from  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  State 
House  in  Louisiana,  he  announced  his  policy  in  a  letter  to 
his  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  "It  is  my  wish,"  he  wrote, 
"that  the  collection  of  the  revenues  should  be  free  from 
partisan  control,  and  organized  on  a  strictly  business  basis, 
with  the  same  guaranties  for  efficiency  and  fidelity  in  the 
selection  of  the  chief  and  subordinate  officers  that  would  be 
required  by  a  prudent  merchant.  Party  leaders  should 
have  no  more  influence  in  appointments  than  other  equally 
respectable  citizens.  No  assessments  for  political  purposes 
on  officers  or  subordinates  should  be  allowed.  No  useless 
officer  or  employee  should  be  retained.  No  officer  should 
be  required  or  permitted  to  take  part  in  the  management  of 
political  organizations,  caucuses,  conventions,  or  election 
campaigns."  The  mandatory  parts  of  this  letter  he  incor 
porated  in  an  order  to  Federal  office-holders,  adding:  "This 
rule  is  applicable  to  every  department  of  the  civil  service. 
It  should  be  understood  by  every  officer  of  the  general  gov- 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     251 

ernment  that  he  is  expected  to  conform  his  conduct  to  its 
requirements. " 

It  must  be  a  source  of  gratification  to  the  alumni  and 
faculty  of  Harvard  College  that  its  president  and  governing 
boards  were,  in  June,  1877,  in  the  judicious  minority,  and 
recognized  their  appreciation  of  Hayes  by  conferring  upon 
him  its  highest  honorary  degree.  Schurz,  who  had  received 
his  LL.D.  the  year  before,  accompanied  Hayes  to  Cam 
bridge,  and,  in  his  Harvard  speech  at  Commencement,  gave 
his  forcible  and  sympathetic  approval  of  the  "  famous  order 
of  the  President,"  as  it  had  now  come  to  be  called. 

A  liberal  and  just  Southern  policy,  the  beginning  of  a 
genuine  reform  in  the  civil  service  and  the  resumption  of 
specie  payments,  are  measures  which  distinguish  and  glorify 
President  Hayes's  administration,  but  in  July,  1877,  public 
attention  was  diverted  from  all  these  by  a  movement  which 
partook  of  the  nature  of  a  social  uprising.  The  depression 
following  the  panic  of  1873  had  been  widespread  and  severe. 
The  slight  revival  of  business  resulting  from  the  Centen 
nial  Exposition  of  1876  and  the  consequent  large  passenger 
traffic  had  been  succeeded  by  a  reaction  in  1877  that  brought 
business  men  to  the  verge  of  despair.  Failures  of  merchants 
and  manufacturers,  stoppage  of  factories,  diminished  traffic 
on  the  railroads,  railroad  bankruptcies  and  receiverships, 
threw  a  multitude  of  laborers  out  of  employment ;  and  those 
fortunate  enough  to  retain  their  jobs  were  less  steadily  em 
ployed,  and  were  subject  to  reductions  in  wages. 

The  state  of  railroad  transportation  was  deplorable. 
The  competition  of  the  trunk  lines,  as  the  railroads  running 
from  Chicago  to  the  seaboard  were  called,  was  sharp,  and, 
as  there  was  not  business  enough  for  all,  the  cutting  of 
through  freight  rates  caused  such  business  to  be  done  at  an 
actual  loss,  while  the  through  passenger  transportation 


252  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

afforded  little  profit.  Any  freight  agent  knew  the  remedy : 
an  increase  of  freight  rates  by  agreement  or  through  a  sys 
tem  of  pooling  earnings.  Agreements  were  made,  but  not 
honestly  kept,  and,  after  a  breach  of  faith,  the  fight  was 
renewed  with  increased  fury.  As  the  railroad  managers 
thought  that  they  could  not  increase  their  gross  earnings, 
they  resolved  on  decreasing  their  expenses,  and  somewhat 
hastily  and  jauntily  they  announced  a  reduction  of  ten  per 
cent  in  the  wages  of  their  employees. 

This  was  resisted.  Trouble  first  began  on  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad,  where  the  men  not  only  struck  against 
the  reduction,  but  prevented  other  men  from  taking  their 
places,  and  stopped  by  force  the  running  of  trains.  The 
militia  of  West  Virginia  was  inadequate  to  cope  with  the  situ 
ation,  and  the  governor  of  that  state  called  on  the  President 
for  troops,  which  were  sent  with  a  beneficial  effect.  But 
the  trouble  spread  to  Maryland,  and  a  conflict  in  Baltimore 
between  the  militia  and  rioters  in  sympathy  with  the  strikers 
resulted,  in  a  number  of  killed  and  wounded.  The  next  day, 
Saturday,  July  21,  a  riot  in  Pittsburg  caused  the  most  pro 
found  sensation  in  the  country  since  the  draft  riots  of  the 
Civil  War.  The  men  on  the  Pennsylvania  and  the  Pitts- 
burg,  Fort  Wayne  and  Chicago  railroads,  had  struck,  and 
all  freight  traffic  was  arrested.  On  this  day  six  hundred 
and  fifty  men  of  the  first  division  of  the  Pennsylvania  na 
tional  guard  at  Philadelphia  arrived  in  Pittsburg,  and,  in  the 
attempt  to  clear  the  Twenty-eighth  Street  crossing,  they 
replied  to  the  missiles  thrown  at  them  by  the  mob  with 
volleys  of  musketry,  killing  instantly  sixteen  of  the  rioters 
and  wounding  many. 

Here  was  cause  for  exasperation,  and  a  furious  mob,  com 
posed  of  strikers,  idle  factory  hands,  and  miners,  tramps, 
communists,  and  outcasts,  began  its  work  of  vengeance  and 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION    253 

plunder.  Possessed  of  firearms,  through  breaking  into  a 
number  of  gun  shops,  they  attacked  the  Philadelphia  sol 
diers,  who  had  withdrawn  to  the  railroad  roundhouse,  and 
a  fierce  battle  ensued.  Unable  to  dislodge  the  soldiers  by 
assault,  the  rioters  attempted  to  roast  them  out  by  setting 
fire  to  cars  of  coke  saturated  with  petroleum  and  pushing 
these  down  the  track  against  the  roundhouse.  This  even 
tually  forced  the  soldiers  to  leave  the  building,  but,  though 
pursued  by  the  rioters,  they  made  a  good  retreat  across  the 
Allegheny  River.  The  mob,  completely  beyond  control, 
began  the  destruction  of  railroad  property.  The  torch  was 
applied  to  two  roundhouses,  to  railroad  sheds,  shops  and 
offices,  cars  and  locomotives.  Barrels  of  spirits,  taken  from 
the  freight  cars,  and  opened  and  drunk,  made  demons  of 
the  men,  and  the  work  of  plunder  and  destruction  of  goods 
in  transit  went  on  with  renewed  fury. 

That  Saturday  night  Pittsburg  witnessed  a  reign  of  terror. 
On  Sunday  the  rioting  and  pillage  were  continued,  and  in 
the  afternoon  the  Union  Depot  and  Railroad  Hotel  and  an 
elevator  near  by  were  burned.  Then  as  the  rioters  were 
satiated  and  too  drunk  to  be  longer  dangerous,  the  riot 
died  out:  it  was  not  checked.  On  Monday,  through  the 
action  of  the  authorities,  armed  companies  of  law-abiding 
citizens,  and  some  faithful  companies  of  the  militia,  order 
was  restored.  But  meanwhile  the  strike  had  spread  to  a 
large  number  of  other  railroads  between  the  seaboard  and 
Chicago  and  St.  Louis.  Freight  traffic  was  entirely  sus 
pended,  and  passenger  trains  were  run  only  on  sufferance 
of  the  strikers.  Business  was  paralyzed,  and  the  condition 
of  disorganization  and  unrest  continued  throughout  the 
month  of  July.  The  governors  of  West  Virginia,  Mary 
land,  Pennsylvania,  and  Illinois  called  upon  the  President 
for  United  States  troops,  which  were  promptly  sent,  and  in 


254  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Indiana  and  Missouri  they  were  employed  on  the  demand  of 
the  United  States  marshals.  Where  the  regular  soldiers 
appeared  order  was  at  once  restored  without  bloodshed,  and 
it  was  said  that  the  rioters  feared  one  Federal  bayonet  more 
than  a  whole  company  of  militia.  The  gravity  of  the  situa 
tion  is  attested  by  three  proclamations  of  warning  from 
President  Hayes. 

Strikes  had  been  common  in  our  country,  and,  while 
serious  enough  in  certain  localities,  had  aroused  no  general 
concern,  but  the  action  of  the  mob  in  Baltimore,  Pittsburg, 
and  Chicago  seemed  like  an  attack  on  society  itself,  and  it 
came  like  a  thunderbolt  out  of  a  clear  sky,  startling  Ameri 
cans,  who  had  hugged  the  delusion  that  such  social  upris 
ings  belonged  to  Europe,  and  had  no  reason  of  being  in  a 
great,  free  republic  where  all  men  had  an  equal  chance. 
The  railroad  managers  had  no  idea  that  they  were  letting 
loose  a  slumbering  giant  when  their  edict  of  a  ten  per  cent 
reduction  went  forth.  It  was  due  to  the  prompt  and  efficient 
action  of  the  President  that  order  was  ultimately  restored. 
In  the  profound  and  earnest  thinking  and  discussion  that 
went  on  during  the  rest  of  the  year,  whenever  thoughtful 
men  gathered  together,  many  a  grateful  word  was  said  of  the 
quiet,  unassuming  man  in  the  White  House  who  saw  clearly 
his  duty  and  never  faltered  in  pursuing  it.  It  was  seen  that 
the  Federal  government,  with  a  resolute  President  at  its  head, 
was  a  tower  of  strength  in  the  event  of  a  social  uprising. 

In  the  reform  of  the  civil  service  Hayes  proceeded  from 
words  to  action.  He  reappointed  Thomas  L.  James  as 
postmaster  of  New  York  City,  who  had  conducted  his  office 
on  a  thorough  business  basis,  and  gave  him  sympathetic 
support.  The  New  York  Custom-house  had  long  been  a 
political  machine  in  which  the  interests  of  politicians  had 
been  more  considered  than  those  of  the  public  it  was  sup- 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     255 

posed  to  serve.  The  President  began  an  investigation  of 
it  through  an  impartial  commission,  and  he  and  Sherman 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  renovation  desired,  in  line 
with  his  letter  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  and  his 
order  to  the  Federal  officers,  could  not  be  effected  so  long 
as  the  present  collector,  Chester  A.  Arthur,  and  the  naval 
officer,  A.  B,  Cornell,  remained  in  office.  Courteous  inti 
mations  were  sent  to  them  that  their  resignations  were  de 
sired  on  the  ground  that  new  officers  could  better  carry  out 
the  reform  which  the  President  had  at  heart.  Arthur  and 
Cornell,  under  the  influence  of  Senator  Conkling,  refused  to 
resign,  and  a  plain  issue  was  made  between  the  President 
and  the  New  York  senator.  At  the  special  session  of  Con 
gress,  in  October,  1877,  he  sent  to  the  Senate  nominations 
of  new  men  for  these  places,  but  the  power  of  Conkling, 
working  through  the  "  courtesy  of  the  Senate,"  was  suffi 
cient  to  procure  their  rejection;  and  this  was  also  the 
result  when  the  same  nominations  were  made  in  December. 
In  July,  1878,  after  the  adjournment  of  Congress,  Hayes 
removed  Arthur  and  Cornell,  and  appointed  Merritt  and 
Burt  in  their  places.  During  the  following  December  these 
appointments  came  before  the  Senate  for  confirmation. 
Sherman  decided  to  resign  if  they  were  rejected,  and  he 
made  a  strong  personal  appeal  to  Senators  Allison,  Windom, 
and  Morrill  that  they  should  not  permit  "the  insane  hate  of 
Conkling"  to  override  the  good  of  the  service  and  the  party. 
A  seven  hours'  struggle  ensued  in  the  Senate,  but  Merritt 
and  Burt  were  confirmed  by  a  decisive  majority.  After 
the  confirmation,  Hayes  wrote  to  Merritt:  "My  desire  is 
that  the  office  be  conducted  on  strictly  business  principles 
and  according  to  the  rules  for  the  civil  service  which  were 
recommended  by  the  Civil  Service  Commission  in  the  ad 
ministration  of  General  Grant." 


256  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

In  three  of  his  annual  messages,  Hayes  presented  strong 
arguments  for  a  reform  in  the  civil  service,  and  he  begged 
Congress,  without  avail,  to  make  appropriations  to  sustain 
the  Civil  Service  Commission.  He  sympathized  with  and 
supported  Schurz  in  his  introduction  into  the  Interior  De 
partment  of  competitive  examinations  for  appointments 
and  promotions,  and  he  himself  extended  that  system  to  the 
custom-houses  and  post-offices  of  the  larger  cities. 

All  that  was  accomplished  in  this  direction  was  due  to  his 
efforts  and  those  of  his  Cabinet.  He  received  neither  sym 
pathy  nor  help  from  Congress;  indeed,  he  met  with  great 
opposition  from  his  own  party.  A  picture  not  without 
humor  is  Hayes  reading,  as  his  justification,  to  the  Repub 
lican  remonstrants  against  his  policy  of  appointments  the 
strong  declaration  for  a  civil  service  based  on  merit  in  the 
Republican  platform,  on  which  he  had  stood  as  candidate 
for  President.  Though  his  preaching  did  not  secure  the 
needed  legislation  from  Congress,  it  produced  a  marked 
effect  on  public  sentiment. 

The  organization  of  civil  service  reform  associations  began 
under  Hayes.  The  New  York  association  was  begun  in 
1877,  reorganized  three  years  later,  and  soon  had  a  large 
national  membership,  which  induced  the  formation  of  other 
state  associations;  and  although  the  national  civil  service 
reform  league  was  not  formed  until  after  his  term  of  office 
expired,  the  origin  of  the  society  may  be  safely  referred  to 
his  influence.  In  the  melioration  of  the  public  service 
which  has  been  so  conspicuously  in  operation  since  1877, 
Hayes  must  be  rated  the  pioneer  President.  Some  of 
Grant's  efforts  in  this  direction  were  well  meant,  but  he  had 
no  fundamental  appreciation  of  the  importance  of  the  ques 
tion  or  enthusiasm  for  the  work,  and,  in  a  general  way,  it 
may  be  said  that  he  left  the  civil  service  in  a  demoralized 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     257 

condition.  How  pregnant  was  Hayes's  remark  in  his  last 
annual  message,  and  what  a  text  it  has  been  for  many  homi 
lies  !  "My  views/'  he  wrote,  "concerning  the  dangers  of 
patronage  or  appointments  for  personal  or  partisan  con 
siderations  have  been  strengthened  by  my  observation  and 
experience  in  the  executive  office,  and  I  believe  these  dan 
gers  threaten  the  stability  of  the  government.7' 

The  brightest  page  in  the  history  of  the  Republican  party 
since  the  Civil  War  tells  of  its  work  in  the  cause  of  sound 
finance,  and  no  administration  is  more  noteworthy  than 
that  of  Hayes.  Here  again  the  work  was  done  by  the  Presi 
dent  and  his  Cabinet  in  the  face  of  a  determined  opposition 
in  Congress.  During  the  first  two  years  of  his  administra 
tion,  the  Democrats  had  a  majority  in  the  House,  and  during 
the  last  two  a  majority  in  both  the  House  and  the  Senate. 
The  Republican  party  was  sounder  than  the  Democratic  on 
the  resumption  of  specie  payments  and  in  the  advocacy  of  a 
correct  money  standard,  but  Hayes  had  by  no  means  all  of 
his  own  party  at  his  back.  Enough  Republicans,  however, 
were  of  his  way  of  thinking  to  prevent  an  irremediable 
inflation  of  either  greenbacks  or  silver. 

The  credit  for  what  was  accomplished  in  finance  belongs 
in  the  main  to  John  Sherman,  a  great  financier  and  consum 
mate  statesman;  but  he  had  the  constant  sympathy  and 
support  of  the  President.  It  was  their  custom  to  take  long 
drives  together  every  Sunday  afternoon  and  discuss  system 
atically  and  thoroughly  the  affairs  of  the  Treasury  and  the 
official  functions  of  the  President.  No  President  ever  had 
a  better  counselor  than  Sherman,  no  Secretary  of  the  Treas 
ury  more  sympathetic  and  earnest  support  than  was  given 
by  Hayes.  Sherman  refunded  845  millions  of  the  public 
debt  at  a  lower  rate  of  interest,  showing  in  his  negotiations 
with  bankers  a  remarkable  combination  of  business  and 


258  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

political  ability.  Cool,  watchful,  and  confident,  he  grasped 
the  point  of  view  of  New  York  and  London  financial  syn 
dicates,  and  to  that  interested  and  somewhat  narrow  vision 
he  joined  the  intelligence  and  foresight  of  a  statesman. 
Sherman  brought  about  the  resumption  of  specie  payments 
on  the  1st  of  January,  1879,  the  date  fixed  in  the  bill  of  which 
he  was  the  chief  author  and  which,  four  years  before,  he  had 
carried  through  the  Senate.  It  was  once  the  fashion  of  his 
opponents  to  discredit  his  work,  and,  emphasizing  the  large 
crop  of  1878  and  the  European  demand  for  our  breadstuffs, 
to  declare  that  resumption  was  brought  about  by  Provi 
dence  and  not  by  John  Sherman.  No  historian  of  American 
finance  can  fail  to  see  how  important  is  the  part  often  played 
by  bountiful  nature,  but  it  is  to  the  lasting  merit  of  Sher 
man  and  Hayes  that,  in  the  dark  years  of  1877  and  1878, 
with  cool  heads  and  unshaken  faith,  they  kept  the  country 
in  the  path  of  financial  safety  and  honor  despite  bitter  oppo 
sition  and  clamorous  abuse. 

These  two  years  formed  a  part  of  my  own  business  career, 
and  I  can  add  my  vivid  recollection  to  my  present  study  of 
the  period.  As  values  steadily  declined  and  losses  rather 
than  profits  in  business  became  the  rule,  the  depression 
and  even  despair  of  business  men  and  manufacturers  can 
hardly  be  exaggerated.  The  daily  list  of  failures  and  bank 
ruptcies  was  appalling.  How  often  one  heard  that  iron 
and  coal  and  land  were  worth  too  little  and  money  too  much, 
that  only  the  bondholder  could  be  happy,  for  his  interest 
was  sure  and  the  purchasing  power  of  his  money  great ! 
In  August,  1878,  when  John  Sherman  went  to  Toledo  to 
speak  to  a  gathering  three  thousand  strong,  he  was 
greeted  with  such  cries  as,  "You  are  responsible  for  all 
the  failures  in  the  country";  "You  work  to  the  interest 
of  the  capitalist";  "Capitalists  own  you,  John  Sherman, 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     259 

and  you  rob  the  poor  widows  and  orphans  to  make 
them  rich." 

By  many  the  resumption  of  specie  payments  was  deemed 
impossible.  The  most  charitable  of  Sherman's  opponents 
looked  upon  him  as  an  honest  but  visionary  enthusiast  who 
would  fail  in  his  policy  and  be  "the  deadest  man  politically" 
in  the  country.  Others  deemed  resumption  possible  only 
by  driving  to  the  wall  a  majority  of  active  business  men. 
It  was  this  sentiment  which  gave  strength  to  the  majority 
in  the  House  of  Representatives,  which  was  opposed  to  any 
contraction  of  the  greenback  currency  and  in  favor  of  the 
free  coinage  of  silver,  and  of  making  it  likewise  a  full  legal 
tender.  Most  of  these  members  of  Congress  were  sincere, 
and  thought  that  they  were  asking  no  more  than  justice 
for  the  trader,  the  manufacturer,  and  the  laborer.  The 
"Ohio  idea"  was  originally  associated  with  an  inflation  of 
the  paper  currency,  but  by  extension  it  came  to  mean  an 
abundance  of  cheap  money,  whether  paper  or  silver.  Pro 
posed  legislation,  with  this  as  its  aim,  was  very  popular  in 
Ohio,  but,  despite  the  intense  feeling  against  the  Presi 
dent's  and  Secretary's  policy  in  their  own  state  and  generally 
throughout  the  West,  Hayes  and  Sherman  maintained  it 
consistently,  and  finally  brought  about  the  resumption  of 
specie  payments. 

In  their  way  of  meeting  the  insistent  demand  for  the 
remonetization  of  silver  Hayes  and  Sherman  differed.  In 
November,  1877,  the  House  of  Representatives,  under  a 
suspension  of  the  rules,  passed  by  a  vote  of  163  to  34  a  bill 
for  the  free  coinage  of  the  412^-  grain  silver  dollar,  making 
that  dollar  likewise  a  legal  tender  for  all  debts  and  dues. 
The  Senate  was  still  Republican,  but  the  Republican  sena 
tors  were  by  no  means  unanimous  for  the  gold  standard. 
Sherman  became  convinced  that,  although  the  free-silver 


260  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

bill  could  not  pass  the  Senate,  something  must  nevertheless 
be  done  for  silver,  and,  in  cooperation  with  Senator  Allison, 
he  was  instrumental  in  the  adoption  of  the  compromise 
which  finally  became  law.  This  remonetized  silver,  provid 
ing  for  the  purchase  of  not  less  than  two  million  dollars7  worth 
of  silver  bullion  per  month,  nor  more  than  four  millions, 
and  for  its  coinage  into  41 2 J  grain  silver  dollars.  Hayes 
vetoed  this  bill,  sending  a  sound  and  manly  message  to  the 
House  of  Representatives ;  but  Congress  passed  it  over  his 
veto  by  a  decided  majority. 

The  regard  for  John  Sherman's  ability  in  Ohio  was  un 
bounded,  and  it  was  generally  supposed  that  in  all  financial 
affairs,  as  well  as  in  many  others,  he  dominated  Hayes.  I 
shared  that  opinion  until  I  learned  indirectly  from  John 
Hay,  who  was  first  assistant  Secretary  of  State  and  intimate 
in  inner  administration  circles,  that  this  was  not  true ;  that 
Hayes  had  decided  opinions  of  his  own  and  did  not  hesitate 
to  differ  with  his  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  Nevertheless, 
not  until  John  Sherman's  "  Recollections "  were  published 
was  it  generally  known,  I  believe,  that  Sherman  had  a  share 
in  the  Allison  compromise,  and  did  not  approve  of  the  Presi 
dent's  veto  of  the  bill  remonetizing  silver. 

The  Federal  control  of  congressional  and  presidential 
elections,  being  a  part  of  the  Reconstruction  legislation, 
was  obnoxious  to  the  Democrats,  and  they  attempted  to 
abrogate  it  by  " riders"  attached  to  several  appropriation 
bills,  especially  that  providing  for  the  army.  While  the 
Senate  remained  Republican,  there  was  chance  for  an  ac 
commodation  between  the  President  and  the  Senate  on  one 
side  and  the  House  on  the  other.  Two  useful  compromises 
were  made,  the  Democrats  yielding  in  one  case,  the  Repub 
licans  in  the  other.  But  in  1879,  when  both  the  House  and 
the  Senate  were  Democratic,  a  sharp  contest  began  between 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION    261 

Congress  and  the  executive,  the  history  of  which  is  written 
in  seven  veto  messages.  For  lack  of  appropriations  to 
carry  on  the  government,  the  President  called  an  extra 
session  of  Congress  in  the  first  year  of  his  administration  and 
another  in  1879,  which  was  a  remarkable  record  of  extra 
sessions  in  a  time  of  peace.  The  Democratic  House  passed 
a  resolution  for  the  appointment  of  a  committee  to  investi 
gate  Hayes's  title  and  aroused  some  alarm  lest  an  effort 
might  be  made  "to  oust  President  Hayes  and  inaugurate 
Tilden."  Although  this  alarm  was  stilled  less  than  a  month 
later  by  a  decisive  vote  of  the  House,  the  action  and  inves 
tigation  were  somewhat  disquieting. 

Thus  Hayes  encountered  sharp  opposition  from  the  Demo 
crats,  who  frequently  pointed  their  arguments  by  declaring 
that  he  held  his  place  by  means  of  fraud.  He  received 
sympathy  from  hardly  any  of  the  leaders  of  his  own  party 
in  Congress,  and  met  with  open  condemnation  from  the 
Stalwarts;  yet  he  pursued  his  course  with  steadiness  and 
equanimity,  and  was  happy  in  his  office.  His  serene  amia 
bility  and  hopefulness,  especially  in  regard  to  affairs  in 
the  Southern  states,  were  a  source  of  irritation  to  the  Stal 
warts;  but  it  was  the  serenity  of  a  man  who  felt  himself 
fully  equal  to  his  responsibilities. 

In  his  inaugural  address,  Hayes  contributed  an  addi 
tion  to  our  political  idiom,  "He  serves  his  party  best  who 
serves  the  country  best."  His  administration  was  a  striking 
illustration  of  this  maxim.  When  he  became  President,  the 
Republican  party  was  in  a  demoralized  condition,  but,  de 
spite  the  factional  criticism  to  which  he  was  subject,  he 
gained  in  the  first  few  months  of  his  Presidency  the  approval 
of  men  of  intelligence  and  independent  thought,  and,  as 
success  attended  his  different  policies,  he  received  the  sup 
port  of  the  masses.  The  signal  Republican  triumph  in 


262  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  presidential  election  of  1880  was  due  to  the  improve 
ment  in  business  conditions  and  to  the  clean  and  efficient 
administration  of  Hayes. 

In  recalling  his  predecessor  in  office,  we  think  more  gladly 
of  the  Grant  of  Donelson,  Vicksburg,  and  Appomattox 
than  of  Grant  the  President,  for  during  his  two  administra 
tions  corruption  was  rife  and  bad  government  to  the  fore. 
Financial  scandals  were  so  frequent  that  despairing  patriots 
cried  out,  "Is  there  no  longer  honesty  in  public  life?"  Our 
country  then  reached  the  high-water  mark  of  corruption  in 
national  affairs.  A  striking  improvement  began  under 
Hayes,  who  infused  into  the  public  service  his  own  high 
ideals  of  honesty  and  efficiency.  Hayes  was  much  assisted 
in  his  social  duties  by  his  wife,  a  woman  of  character  and 
intelligence,  who  carried  herself  with  grace  and  dignity. 
One  sometimes  heard  the  remark  that  as  Hayes  was  ruled  in 
political  matters  by  John  Sherman,  so  in  social  affairs  he 
was  ruled  by  his  wife.  The  sole  foundation  for  this  lay  in 
his  deference  to  her  total  abstinence  principles,  which  she 
held  so  strongly  as  to  exclude  wine  from  the  White  House 
table  except,  I  believe,  at  one  official  dinner,  that  to  the 
Russian  Grand  Dukes. 

Hayes's  able  Cabinet  was  likewise  a  harmonious  one. 
Its  members  were  accustomed  to  dine  together  at  regular 
intervals  (fortnightly,  I  think),  when  affairs  of  state  and 
other  subjects  were  discussed,  and  the  geniality  of  these 
occasions  was  enhanced  by  a  temperate  circulation  of  the 
wine  bottle.  There  must  have  been  very  good  talk  at  these 
social  meetings.  Evarts  and  Schurz  were  citizens  of  the 
world.  Evarts  was  a  man  of  keen  intelligence  and  wide 
information,  and  possessed  a  genial  as  well  as  a  caustic 
wit.  Schurz  could  discuss  present  politics  and  past  history. 
He  was  well  versed  in  European  history  of  the  eighteenth 


REVIEW  OF  PRESIDENT  HAYES'S  ADMINISTRATION     263 

century  and  the  Napoleonic  wars,  and  could  talk  about  the 
power  of  Voltaire  in  literature  and  the  influence  of 
Lessing  on  Goethe.  From  appreciative  discourse  on  the 
Wagner  opera  and  the  French  drama,  he  could,  if  the  con 
versation  turned  to  the  Civil  War,  give  a  lively  account  of 
the  battles  of  Chancellorsville  or  Gettysburg,  in  both  of 
which  he  had  borne  an  honorable  part.  Sherman  was  not 
a  cosmopolitan  like  his  two  colleagues,  but  he  loved  dining 
out.  His  manners  were  those  of  the  old-school  gentleman ; 
he  could  listen  with  genial  appreciation,  and  he  could  talk 
of  events  in  American  history  of  which  he  had  been  a  con 
temporaneous  observer ;  as,  for  example,  of  the  impressive 
oratory  of  Daniel  Webster  at  a  dinner  in  Plymouth ;  or  the 
difference  between  the  national  conventions  of  his  early 
political  life  and  the  huge  ones  of  the  present,  illustrating 
his  comparison  with  an  account  of  the  Whig  convention  of 
1852,  to  which  he  went  as  a  delegate. 

Differing  in  many  respects,  Hayes  and  Grover  Cleveland 
were  alike  in  the  possession  of  executive  ability  and  the  lack 
of  oratorical.  We  all  know  that  it  is  a  purely  academic 
question  which  is  the  better  form  of  government,  the  Eng 
lish  or  our  own,  as  both  have  grown  up  to  adapt  themselves 
to  peculiar  conditions.  But  when  I  hear  an  enthusiast  for 
Cabinet  government  and  ministerial  responsibility,  I  like  to 
point  out  that  men  like  Hayes  and  Cleveland,  who  made 
excellent  Presidents,  could  never  have  been  prime  ministers. 
One  cannot  conceive  of  either  in  an  office  equivalent  to  that 
of  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury,  being  heckled  by  members 
on  the  front  opposition  bench  and  holding  his  own  or  get 
ting  the  better  of  his  opponents. 

I  have  brought  Hayes  and  Cleveland  into  juxtaposition, 
as  each  had  a  high  personal  regard  for  the  other.  Hayes 
died  on  January  17,  1893.  Cleveland,  the  President-elect, 


264  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

was  to  be  inaugurated  on  the  following  fourth  of  March. 
Despite  remonstrance  and  criticism  from  bitter  partisans 
of  his  own  party,  who  deprecated  any  honor  paid  to  one 
whom  all  good  Democrats  deemed  a  fraudulent  President, 
Cleveland  traveled  from  New  York  to  Fremont,  Ohio,  to 
attend  the  funeral.  He  could  only  think  of  Hayes  as  an 
ex-President  and  a  man  whom  he  highly  esteemed. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN 

Lecture  read  at  Harvard  University,  April  13, 1908 ;  printed  in  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  for  September,  1908. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN 

OUR  two  great  journalists  of  the  nineteenth  century  were 
Greeley  and  Godkin.  Though  differing  in  very  many 
respects,  they  were  alike  in  possessing  a  definite  moral  pur 
pose.  The  most  glorious  and  influential  portion  of  Greeley's 
career  lay  between  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act 
in  1854  and  the  election  of  Lincoln  in  1860,  when  the  press 
played  an  important  part  in  the  upbuilding  of  a  political 
party  which  formulated  in  a  practical  manner  the  anti- 
slavery  sentiment  of  the  country.  Foremost  among  news 
papers  was  the  New  York  Tribune;  foremost  among  editors 
was  Horace  Greeley.  Of  Greeley  in  his  best  days  Godkin 
wrote:  "He  has  an  enthusiasm  which  never  flags,  and  a 
faith  in  principles  which  nothing  can  shake,  and  an  English 
style  which,  for  vigor,  terseness,  clearness,  and  simplicity, 
has  never  been  surpassed,  except  perhaps  by  Cobbett."  1 

Greeley  and  Godkin  were  alike  in  furnishing  their  readers 
with  telling  arguments.  In  northern  New  York  and  the 
Western  Reserve  of  Ohio  the  Weekly  Tribune  was  a  political 
Bible.  "Why  do  you  look  so  gloomy?"  said  a  traveler, 
riding  along  the  highway  in  the  Western  Reserve  during 
the  old  antislavery  days,  to  a  farmer  who  was  sitting 
moodily  on  a  fence.  "Because,"  replied  the  farmer,  "my 
Democratic  friend  next  door  got  the  best  of  me  in  an  argu 
ment  last  night.  But  when  I  get  my  Weekly  Tribune  to 
morrow  I'll  knock  the  foundations  all  out  from  under  him."  2 

Premising  that  Godkin  is  as  closely  identified  with  The 

1  R.  Ogden's  Life  and  Letters  of  E.  L.  Godkin,  I,  255. 

2  Rhodes's  History  of  the  United  States,  II,  72  (C.  M.  Depew). 

267 


268  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Nation  and  the  Evening  Post  as  Greeley  with  the  Tribune,  I 
shall  refer  to  a  personal  experience.  Passing  a  part  of  the 
winter  of  1886  in  a  hotel  at  Thomasville,  Georgia,  it  chanced 
that  among  the  hundred  or  more  guests  there  were  eight 
or  ten  of  us  who  regularly  received  The  Nation  by  post. 
Ordinarily  it  arrived  on  the  Friday  noon  train  from  Savan 
nah,  and  when  we  came  from  our  mid-day  dinner  into  the 
hotel  office,  there,  in  our  respective  boxes,  easily  seen,  and 
from  their  peculiar  form  recognized  by  every  one,  were  our 
copies  of  The  Nation.  Occasionally  the  papers  missed  con 
nection  at  Savannah,  and  our  Nations  did  not  arrive  until 
after  supper.  It  used  to  be  said  by  certain  scoffers  that  if  a 
discussion  of  political  questions  came  up  in  the  afternoon  of 
one  of  those  days  of  disappointment,  we  readers  were  mum ; 
but  in  the  late  evening,  after  having  digested  our  political 
pabulum,  we  were  ready  to  join  issue  with  any  antagonist. 
Indeed,  each  of  us  might  have  used  the  words  of  James 
Russell  Lowell,  written  while  he  was  traveling  on  the  Con 
tinent  and  visiting  many  places  where  The  Nation  could  not 
be  bought:  "All  the  time  I  was  without  it,  my  mind  was 
chaos  and  I  didn't  feel  that  I  had  a  safe  opinion  to  swear 
by."  l 

While  the  farmer  of  the  Western  Reserve  and  Lowell 
are  extreme  types  of  clientele,  each  represents  fairly  well 
the  peculiar  following  of  Greeley  and  of  Godkin,  which 
differed  as  much  as  did  the  personal  traits  of  the  two  jour 
nalists.  Godkin  speaks  of  Greeley's  "odd  attire,  sham 
bling  gait,  simple,  good-natured  and  hopelessly  peaceable 
face,  and  long  yellow  locks/7  2  His  "old  white  hat  and 
white  coat,"  which  in  New  York  were  regarded  as  an  affec 
tation,  counted  with  his  following  west  of  the  Hudson  River 
as  a  winning  eccentricity.  When  he  came  out  upon  the 
1  Ogden,  II,  88.  2  Ibid.,  I,  257. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  269 

lecture  platform  with  crumpled  shirt,  cravat  awry,  and 
wrinkled  coat  looking  as  if  he  had  traveled  for  a  number  of 
nights  and  days,  such  disorder  appeared  to  many  of  his 
Western  audiences  as  nothing  worse  than  the  mark  of  a  very 
busy  man,  who  had  paid  them  the  compliment  of  leaving 
his  editorial  rooms  to  speak  to  them  in  person,  and  who  had 
their  full  sympathy  as  he  thus  opened  his  discourse,  "You 
mustn't,  my  friends,  expect  fine  words  from  a  rough  busy 
man  like  me."  * 

The  people  who  read  the  Tribune  did  not  expect  fine 
words;  they  were  used  to  the  coarse,  abusive  language  in 
which  Greeley  repelled  attacks,  and  to  his  giving  the  lie 
with  heartiness  and  vehemence.  They  enjoyed  reading 
that  " another  lie  was  nailed  to  the  counter,"  and  that  an 
antagonist  "was  a  liar,  knowing  himself  to  be  a  liar,  and 
lying  with  naked  intent  to  deceive."  2 

On  the  contrary,  the  dress,  the  face,  and  the  personal 
bearing  of  Godkin  proclaimed  at  once  the  gentleman  and 
cultivated  man  of  the  world.  You  felt  that  he  was  a  man 
whom  you  would  like  to  meet  at  dinner,  accompany  on  a 
long  walk,  or  cross  the  Atlantic  with,  were  you  an  acquain 
tance  or  friend. 

An  incident  related  by  Godkin  himself  shows  that  at 
least  one  distinguished  gentleman  did  not  enjoy  sitting  at 
meat  with  Greeley.  During  the  spring  of  1864  Godkin  met 
Greeley  at  breakfast  at  the  house  of  Mr.  John  A.  C.  Gray. 
William  Cullen  Bryant,  at  that  time  editor  of  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  was  one  of  the  guests,  and,  when  Greeley  en 
tered  the  room,  was  standing  near  the  fireplace  conversing 
with  his  host.  On  observing  that  Bryant  did  not  speak  to 
Greeley,  Gray  asked  him  in  a  whisper,  "Don't  you  know 

1  Parton's  Greeley,  331,  576;  my  own  recollections;  Ogden,  I,  255. 

2  Godkin,  Random  Recollections,  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899. 


270  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Mr.  Greeley?"  In  a  loud  whisper  Bryant  replied,  "No,  I 
don't;  he's  a  blackguard  —  he's  a  blackguard."1 

In  the  numbers  of  people  whom  he  influenced,  Greeley 
had  the  advantage  over  Godkin.  In  February,  1855,  the 
circulation  of  the  Tribune  was  172,000,  and  its  own  estimate 
of  its  readers  half  a  million,  which  was  certainly  not  exces 
sive.  It  is  not  a  consideration  beyond  bounds  to  infer  that 
the  readers  of  the  Tribune  in  1860  furnished  a  goodly  part 
of  the  1,886,000  votes  which  were  received  by  Lincoln. 

At  different  times,  while  Godkin  was  editor,  The  Nation 
stated  its  exact  circulation,  which,  as  I  remember  it,  was 
about  10,000,  and  it  probably  had  50,000  readers.  As  many 
of  its  readers  were  in  the  class  of  Lowell,  its  indirect  influence 
was  immense.  Emerson  said  that  The  Nation  had  "  breadth, 
variety,  self-sustainment,  and  an  admirable  style  of  thought 
and  expression."  —  "I  owe  much  to  The  Nation,"  wrote 
Francis  Parkman.  "I  regard  it  as  the  most  valuable  of 
American  journals,  and  feel  that  the  best  interests  of  the 
country  are  doubly  involved  in  its  success."  —  "What  an 
influence  you  have  !"  said  George  William  Curtis  to  Godkin. 
"What  a  sanitary  element  in  our  affairs  The  Nation  is  !"  — 
"To  my  generation,"  wrote  William  James,  "Godkin's  was 
certainly  the  towering  influence  in  all  thought  concerning 
public  affairs,  and  indirectly  his  influence  has  certainly 
been  more  pervasive  than  that  of  any  other  writer  of  the 
generation,  for  he  influenced  other  writers  who  never  quoted 
him,  and  determined  the  whole  current  of  discussion."  — 
"When  the  work  of  this  century  is  summed  up,"  wrote 
Charles  Eliot  Norton  to  Godkin,  "what  you  have  done  for 
the  good  old  cause  of  civilization,  the  cause  which  is  always 
defeated,  but  always  after  defeat  taking  more  advanced  posi 
tion  than  before  —  what  you  have  done  for  this  cause  will 

1  Ogden,  I,  168. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  271 

count  for  much."  —  "I  am  conscious,"  wrote  President 
Eliot  to  Godkin,  "that  The  Nation  has  had  a  decided  effect 
on  my  opinions  and  my  action  for  nearly  forty  years ;  and 
I  believe  it  has  had  like  effect  on  thousands  of  educated 
Americans."  1 

A  string  of  quotations,  as  is  well  known,  becomes  weari 
some  ;  but  the  importance  of  the  point  that  I  am  trying  to 
make  will  probably  justify  one  more.  "  I  find  myself  so 
thoroughly  agreeing  with  The  Nation  always,"  wrote  Lowell, 
"that  I  am  half  persuaded  that  I  edit  it  myself  !  "2  Truly 
Lowell  had  a  good  company:  Emerson,  Parkman,  Curtis, 
Norton,  James,  Eliot,  —  all  teachers  in  various  ways. 
Through  their  lectures,  books,  and  speeches,  they  influenced 
college  students  at  an  impressible  age;  they  appealed  to 
young  and  to  middle-aged  men ;  and  they  furnished  comfort 
and  entertainment  for  the  old.  It  would  have  been  diffi 
cult  to  find  anywhere  in  the  country  an  educated  man  whose 
thought  was  not  affected  by  some  one  of  these  seven ;  and 
their  influence  on  editorial  writers  for  newspapers  was  re 
markable.  These  seven  were  all  taught  by  Godkin. 

"Every  Friday  morning  when  The  Nation  comes,"  wrote 
Lowell  to  Godkin,  "I  fill  my  pipe,  and  read  it  from  beginning 
to  end.  Do  you  do  it  all  yourself?  Or  are  there  really  so 
many  clever  men  in  the  country  ?  "  3  Lowell's  experience, 
with  or  without  tobacco,  was  undoubtedly  that  of  hundreds, 
perhaps  of  thousands,  of  educated  men,  and  the  query  he 
raised  was  not  an  uncommon  one.  At  one  time,  Godkin,  I 
believe,  wrote  most  of  "The  Week,"  which  was  made  up 
of  brief  and  pungent  comments  on  events,  as  well  as  the  prin 
cipal  editorial  articles.  The  power  of  iteration,  which  the 
journalist  possesses,  is  great,  and,  when  that  power  is  wielded 

'Ogden,  I,  221,  249,  251,  252;  II,  222,  231. 

2  Letters  of  J.  R.  Lowell,  II,  76.        3  Ibid.,  I,  368. 


272  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

by  a  man  of  keen  intelligence  and  wide  information,  possess 
ing  a  knowledge  of  the  world,  a  sense  of  humor,  and  an  effec 
tive  literary  style,  it -becomes  tremendous.  The  only  escape 
from  Godkin's  iteration  was  one  frequently  tried,  and  that 
was,  to  stop  The  Nation. 

Although  Godkin  published  three  volumes  of  Essays,  the 
honors  he  received  during  his  lifetime  were  due  to  his  work 
as  editor  of  The  Nation  and  the  Evening  Post;  and  this  is 
his  chief  title  of  fame.  The  education,  early  experience, 
and  aspiration  of  such  a  journalist  are  naturally  matter  of 
interest.  Born  in  1831,  in  the  County  of  Wicklow  in  the 
southeastern  part  of  Ireland,  the  son  of  a  Presbyterian  min 
ister,  he  was  able  to  say  when  referring  to  Goldwin  Smith, 
"I  am  an  Irishman,  but  I  am  as  English  in  blood  as  he  is." 
Receiving  his  higher  education  at  Queen's  College,  Belfast, 
he  took  a  lively  interest  in  present  politics,  his  college  friends 
being  Liberals.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  their  prophet,  Grote 
and  Bentham  their  daily  companions,  and  America  was  their 
promised  land.  "To  the  scoffs  of  the  Tories  that  our 
schemes  were  impracticable,"  he  has  written  of  these  days, 
"our  answer  was  that  in  America,  barring  slavery,  they  were 
actually  at  work.  There,  the  chief  of  the  state  and  the  legis 
lators  were  freely  elected  by  the  people.  There,  the  offices 
were  open  to  everybody  who  had  the  capacity  to  fill  them. 
There  was  no  army  or  navy,  two  great  curses  of  humanity 
in  all  ages.  There  was  to  be  no  war  except  war  in  self- 
defense.  ...  In  fact,  we  did  not  doubt  that  in  America 
at  last  the  triumph  of  humanity  over  its  own  weaknesses 
and  superstitions  was  being  achieved,  and  the  dream  of 
Christendom  was  at  last  being  realized."  2 

As  a  correspondent  of  the  London  Daily  News  he  went  to 
the  Crimea.     The  scenes  at  Malakoff  gave  him  a  disgust  for 

1  Ogden,  1, 1.  3  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899;   Odgen,  I,  11. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  273 

war  which  thenceforth  he  never  failed  to  express  upon  every 
opportunity.  When  a  man  of  sixty-eight,  reckoning  its 
cost  in  blood  and  treasure,  he  deemed  the  Crimean  War 
entirely  unnecessary  and  very  deplorable.1  Godkin  arrived 
in  America  in  November,  1856,  and  soon  afterwards,  with 
Olmsted's  "Journey  in  the  Seaboard  Slave  States,"  the  "Back 
Country,"  and  "  Texas,"  as  guidebooks,  took  a  horseback  jour 
ney  through  the  South.  Following  closely  Olmsted's  trail, 
and  speaking  therefore  with  knowledge,  he  has  paid  him  one 
of  the  highest  compliments  one  traveler  ever  paid  another. 
"Olmsted's  work,"  he  wrote,  "in  vividness  of  description 
and  in  photographic  minuteness  far  surpasses  Arthur 
Young's."  2  During  this  journey  he  wrote  letters  to  the 
London  Daily  News,  and  these  were  continued  after  his 
return  to  New  York  City.  For  the  last  three  years  of  our 
Civil  War,  he  was  its  regular  correspondent,  and,  as  no  one 
denies  that  he  was  a  powerful  advocate  when  his  heart  was 
enlisted,  he  rendered  efficient  service  to  the  cause  of  the 
North.  The  News  was  strongly  pro-Northern,  and  Godkin 
furnished  the  facts  which  rendered  its  leaders  sound  and 
instructive  as  well  as  sympathetic.  All  this  while  he  was 
seeing  socially  the  best  people  in  New  York  City,  and  making 
useful  and  desirable  acquaintances  in  Boston  and  Cam 
bridge. 

The  interesting  story  of  the  foundation  of  The  Nation  has 
been  told  a  number  of  times,  and  it  will  suffice  for  our  pur 
pose  to  say  that  there  were  forty  stockholders  who  contrib 
uted  a  capital  of  one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  one  half 
of  which  was  raised  in  Boston,  and  one  quarter  each  in 
Philadelphia  and  New  York.  Godkin  was  the  editor,  and 
next  to  him  the  chief  promoters  were  James  M.  McKim  of 
Philadelphia  and  Charles  Eliot  Norton.  The  first  number 
1  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899.  2  Ibid.;  Ogden,  I,  113. 


274  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

of  this  " weekly  journal  of  politics,  literature,  science,  and 
art"  appeared  on  July  6,  1865.  Financial  embarrassment 
and  disagreements  among  the  stockholders  marked  the  first 
year  of  its  existence,  at  the  end  of  which  Godkin,  McKim, 
and  Frederick  Law  Olmsted  took  over  the  property,  and 
continued  the  publication  under  the  proprietorship  of  E.  L. 
Godkin  &  Co.  "  The  Nation  owed  its  continued  existence  to 
Charles  Eliot  Norton,"  wrote  Godkin  in  1899.  "It  was  his 
calm  and  confidence  amid  the  shrieks  of  combatants  .  .  . 
which  enabled  me  to  do  my  work  even  with  decency."  1 

Sixteen  years  after  The  Nation  was  started,  in  1881,  God- 
kin  sold  it  out  to  the  Evening  Post,  becoming  associate  editor 
of  that  journal,  with  Carl  Schurz  as  his  chief.  The  Nation 
was  thereafter  published  as  the  weekly  edition  of  the  Even 
ing  Post.  In  1883  Schurz  retired  and  Godkin  was  made 
editor-in-chief,  having  the  aid  and  support  of  one  of  the 
owners,  Horace  White.  On  January  1,  1900,  on  account  of 
ill  health,  he  withdrew  from  the  editorship  of  the  Evening 
Post,2  thus  retiring  from  active  journalism. 

For  thirty-five  years  he  had  devoted  himself  to  his 
work  with  extraordinary  ability  and  singleness  of  purpose. 
Marked  appreciation  came  to  him :  invitations  to  deliver 
courses  of  lectures  from  both  Harvard  and  Yale,  the  degree 
of  A.M.  from  Harvard,  and  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  from 
Oxford.  What  might  have  been  a  turning  point  in  his 
career  was  the  offer  in  1870  of  the  professorship  of  history  at 
Harvard.  He  was  strongly  tempted  to  accept  it,  but,  be 
fore  coming  to  a  decision,  he  took  counsel  of  a  number  of 
friends;  and  few  men,  I  think,  have  ever  received  such 
wise  and  disinterested  advice  as  did  Godkin  when  he  was 
thus  hesitating  in  what  way  he  should  apply  his  teaching. 

1  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899;  Ogden,  I,  passim;  The  Nation, 
June  25,  1885,  May  23,  1902.  2  Ogden,  II,  Chap.  XVII. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  275 

The  burden  of  the  advice  was  not  to  take  the  professorship, 
if  he  had  to  give  up  The  Nation. 

Frederick  Law  Olmsted  wrote  to  him:  "If  you  can't 
write  fully  half  of  'The  Week'  and  half  the  leaders,  and 
control  the  drift  and  tone  of  the  whole  while  living  at  Cam 
bridge,  give  up  the  professorship,  for  The  Nation  is  worth 
many  professorships.  It  is  a  question  of  loyalty  over  a 
question  of  comfort."  Lowell  wrote  to  him  in  the  same 
strain:  "Stay  if  the  two  things  are  incompatible.  We 
may  find  another  professor  by  and  by  ...  but  we  can't  find 
another  editor  for  The  Nation"  From  Germany,  John 
Bigelow  sent  a  characteristic  message:  "Tell  the  University 
to  require  each  student  to  take  a  copy  of  The  Nation.  Do 
not  profess  history  for  them  in  any  other  way.  I  dare  say 
your  lectures  would  be  good,  but  why  limit  your  pupils  to 
hundreds  which  are  now  counted  by  thousands?"  * 

As  is  well  known,  Godkin  relinquished  the  idea  of  the 
college  connection  and  stuck  to  his  job,  although  the  quiet 
and  serenity  of  a  professor's  life  in  Cambridge  contrasted 
with  his  own  turbulent  days  appealed  to  him  powerfully. 
"Ten  years  hence,"  he  wrote  to  Norton,  "if  things  go  on  as 
they  are  now  I  shall  be  the  most  odious  man  in  America. 
Not  that  I  shall  not  have  plenty  of  friends,  but  my  enemies 
will  be  far  more  numerous  and  active."  Six  years  after  he 
had  founded  The  Nation,  and  one  year  after  he  had  declined 
the  Harvard  professorship,  when  he  was  yet  but  forty  years 
old,  he  gave  this  humorously  exaggerated  account  of  his 
physical  failings  due  to  his  nervous  strain:  "I  began  The 
Nation  young,  handsome,  and  fascinating,  and  am  now 
withered  and  somewhat  broken,  rheumatism  gaining  on  me 
rapidly,  my  complexion  ruined,  as  also  my  figure,  for  I 
am  growing  stout."  2 

1  Ogden,  II,  Chap.  XI.  2  Ibid.,  II,  51. 


276  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

But  his  choice  between  the  Harvard  professorship  and 
The  Nation  was  a  wise  one.  He  was  a  born  writer  of  para 
graphs  and  editorials.  The  files  of  The  Nation  are  his  monu 
ment.  A  crown  of  his  laborious  days  is  the  tribute  of  James 
Bryce :  "  The  Nation  was  the  best  weekly  not  only  in  Amer 
ica  but  in  the  world." 

Thirty-five  years  of  journalism,  in  which  Godkin  was  ac 
customed  to  give  hard  blows,  did  not,  as  he  himself  fore 
shadowed,  call  forth  a  unanimous  chorus  of  praise ;  and  the 
objections  of  intelligent  and  high-minded  men  are  well 
worth  taking  into  account.  The  most  common  one  is  that 
his  criticism  was  always  destructive;  that  he  had  an  eye 
for  the  weak  side  of  causes  and  men  that  he  did  not  favor, 
and  these  he  set  forth  with  unremitting  vigor  without  re 
gard  for  palliating  circumstances;  that  he  erected  a  high 
and  impossible  ideal  and  judged  all  men  by  it;  hence,  if  a 
public  man  was  right  eight  times  out  of  ten,  he  would  seize 
upon  the  two  failures  and  so  parade  them  with  his  withering 
sarcasm  that  the  reader  could  get  no  other  idea  than  that 
the  man  was  either  weak  or  wicked.  An  editor  of  very 
positive  opinions,  he  was  apt  to  convey  the  idea  that  if  any 
one  differed  from  him  on  a  vital  question,  like  the  tariff  or 
finance  or  civil  service  reform,  he  was  necessarily  a  bad  man. 
He  made  no  allowances  for  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature, 
and  had  no  idea  that  he  himself  ever  could  be  mistaken. 
Though  a  powerful  critic,  he  did  not  realize  the  highest 
criticism,  which  discerns  and  brings  out  the  good  as  well  as 
the  evil.  He  won  his  reputation  by  dealing  out  censure, 
which  has  a  rare  attraction  for  a  certain  class  of  minds, 
as  Tacitus  observed  in  his  "History."  "People,"  he  wrote, 
"lend  a  ready  ear  to  detraction  and  spite,"  for  "malignity 
wears  the  imposing  appearance  of  independence."  2 

1  Studies  in  Contemporary  Biography,  372.         2  Tacitus,  History,  I,  1. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  277 

The  influence  of  The  Nation,  therefore,  —  so  these  ob 
jectors  to  Godkin  aver,  —  was  especially  unfortunate  on 
the  intelligent  youth  of  the  country.  It  was  in  1870  that 
John  Bigelow,  whom  I  have  just  quoted,  advised  Harvard 
University  to  include  The  Nation  among  its  requirements; 
and  it  is  true  that  at  that  time,  and  for  a  good  while  after 
wards,  The  Nation  was  favorite  reading  for  serious  Harvard 
students.  The  same  practice  undoubtedly  prevailed  at 
most  other  colleges.  Now  I  have  been  told  that  the  effect 
of  reading  The  Nation  was  to  prevent  these  young  men  from 
understanding  their  own  country;  that,  as  Godkin  himself 
did  not  comprehend  America,  he  was  an  unsound  teacher 
and  made  his  youthful  readers  see  her  through  a  false  me 
dium.  And  I  am  further  informed  that  in  mature  life  it  cost 
an  effort,  a  mental  wrench,  so  to  speak,  to  get  rid  of  this  in 
fluence  and  see  things  as  they  really  were,  which  was  neces 
sary  for  usefulness  in  lives  cast  in  America.  The  United 
States  was  our  country;  she  was  entitled  to  our  love  and 
service;  and  yet  such  a  frame  of  mind  was  impossible,  so 
this  objection  runs,  if  we  read  and  believed  the  writing  of 
The  Nation.  A  man  of  character  and  ability,  who  had  filled 
a  number  of  public  offices  with  credit,  told  me  that  the  in 
fluence  of  The  Nation  had  been  potent  in  keeping  college 
graduates  out  of  public  life ;  that  things  in  the  United  States 
were  painted  so  black  both  relatively  and  absolutely  that 
the  young  men  naturally  reasoned,  "Why  shall  we  concern 
ourselves  about  a  country  which  is  surely  going  to  destruc 
tion?"  Far  better,  they  may  have  said,  to  pattern  after 
Plato's  philosopher  who  kept  out  of  politics,  being  "like 
one  who  retires  under  the  shelter  of  a  wall  in  the  storm  of 
dust  and  sleet  which  the  driving  wind  hurries  along."  1 

Such  considerations  undoubtedly  lost  The  Nation  valuable 

1  Republic. 


278  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

subscribers.  I  have  been  struck  with  three  circumstances 
in  juxtaposition.  At  the  time  of  Judge  Hoar's  forced  resig 
nation  from  Grant's  Cabinet  in  1870,  The  Nation  said,  "In 
peace  as  in  war  '  that  is  best  blood  which  hath  most  iron  in't ; ' 
and  much  is  to  be  excused  to  the  man  [that  is,  Judge  Hoar] 
who  has  for  the  first  time  in  many  years  of  Washington 
history  given  a  back-handed  blow  to  many  an  impudent 
and  arrogant  dispenser  of  patronage.  He  may  well  be 
proud  of  most  of  the  enmity  that  he  won  while  in  office, 
and  may  go  back  contented  to  Massachusetts  to  be  her  most 
honored  citizen."  l  Two  months  later  Lowell  wrote  to 
Godkin,  "The  bound  volumes  of  The  Nation  standing  on 
Judge  Hoar's  library  table,  as  I  saw  them  the  other  day, 
were  a  sign  of  the  estimation  in  which  it  is  held  by  solid  peo 
ple  and  it  is  they  who  in  the  long  run  decide  the  fortunes  of 
such  a  journal."  2  But  The  Nation  lost  Judge  Hoar's  sup 
port.  When  I  called  upon  him  in  1893  he  was  no  longer 
taking  or  reading  it. 

It  is  the  sum  of  individual  experiences  that  makes  up 
the  influence  of  a  journal  like  The  Nation,  and  one  may  there 
fore  be  pardoned  the  egotism  necessarily  arising  from  a  re 
lation  of  one's  own  contact  with  it.  In  1866,  while  a  student 
at  the  University  of  Chicago,  I  remember  well  that,  in  a 
desultory  talk  in  the  English  Literature  class,  Professor 
William  Matthews  spoke  of  The  Nation  and  advised  the 
students  to  read  it  each  week  as  a  political  education  of 
high  value.  This  was  the  first  knowledge  I  had  of  it,  but 
I  was  at  that  time,  along  with  many  other  young  men,  de 
voted  to  the  Round  Table,  an  "Independent  weekly  review 
of  Politics,  Finance,  Literature,  Society,  and  Art,"  which 
flourished  between  the  years  1864  and  1868.  We  asked  the 
professor,  "Do  you  consider  The  Nation  superior  to  the 

1  June  23,  Rhodes,  VI,  382.  2  Ogden,  II,  66. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  279 

Round  Table?"  —  "Decidedly,"  was  his  reply.  "The  edi 
tors  of  the  Round  Table  seem  to  write  for  the  sake  of  writ 
ing,  while  the  men  who  are  expressing  themselves  in  The 
Nation  do  so  because  their  hearts  and  minds  are  full  of  their 
matter."  This  was  a  just  estimate  of  the  difference  between 
the  two  journals.  The  Round  Table,  modeled  after  the 
Saturday  Review,  was  a  feeble  imitation  of  the  London 
weekly,  then  in  its  palmy  days,  while  The  Nation,  which  was 
patterned  after  the  Spectator,  did  not  suffer  by  the  side  of  its 
model.  On  this  hint  from  Professor  Matthews,  I  began 
taking  and  reading  The  Nation,  and  with  the  exception  of 
one  year  in  Europe  during  my  student  days,  I  have  read  it 
ever  since. 

Before  I  touch  on  certain  specifications  I  must  premise 
that  the  influence  of  this  journal  on  a  Westerner,  who  read 
it  in  a  receptive  spirit,  was  probably  more  potent  than  on 
one  living  in  the  East.  The  arrogance  of  a  higher  civiliza 
tion  in  New  York,  Boston,  and  Philadelphia  than  elsewhere 
in  the  United  States,  the  term  "wild  and  woolly  West," 
applied  to  the  region  west  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  is 
somewhat  irritating  to  a  Westerner.  Yet  it  remains  none 
the  less  true  that,  other  things  being  equal,  a  man  living  in 
the  environment  of  Boston  or  New  York  would  have  arrived 
more  easily  and  more  quickly  at  certain  sound  political 
views  I  shall  proceed  to  specify  than  he  would  while  living 
in  Cleveland  or  Chicago.  The  gospel  which  Godkin  preached 
was  needed  much  more  in  the  West  than  in  the  East ;  and 
his  disciples  in  the  western  country  had  for  him  a  high  de 
gree  of  reverence.  In  the  biography  of  Godkin,  allusion  is 
made  to  the  small  pecuniary  return  for  his  work,  but  in 
thinking  of  him  we  never  considered  the  money  question. 
We  supposed  that  he  made  a  living ;  we  knew  from  his  ar 
ticles  that  he  was  a  gentleman,  and  saw  much  of  good  society, 


280  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

and  there  was  not  one  of  us  who  would  not  rather  have  been 
in  his  shoes  than  in  those  of  the  richest  man  in  New  York. 
We  placed  such  trust  in  him  —  which  his  life  shows  to  have 
been  abundantly  justified  —  that  we  should  have  lost  all 
confidence  in  human  nature  had  he  ever  been  tempted  by 
place  or  profit.  And  his  influence  was  abiding.  Presidents, 
statesmen,  senators,  congressmen  rose  and  fell;  political 
administrations  changed;  good,  bad,  and  weak  public  men 
passed  away ;  but  Godkin  preached  to  us  every  week  a  timely 
and  cogent  sermon. 

To  return  now  to  my  personal  experience.  I  owe  wholly 
to  The  Nation  my  conviction  in  favor  of  civil  service  reform ; 
in  fact,  it  was  from  these  columns  that  I  first  came  to  under 
stand  the  question.  The  arguments  advanced  were  sane 
and  strong,  and  especially  intelligible  to  men  in  business, 
who,  in  the  main,  chose  their  employees  on  the  ground  of 
fitness,  and  who  made  it  a  rule  to  retain  and  advance  com 
petent  and  honest  men  in  their  employ.  I  think  that  on 
this  subject  the  indirect  influence  of  The  Nation  was  very 
great,  in  furnishing  arguments  to  men  like  myself,  who  never 
lost  an  opportunity  to  restate  them,  and  to  editorial  writers 
for  the  Western  newspapers,  who  generally  read  The  Nation 
and  who  were  apt  to  reproduce  its  line  of  reasoning.  When 
I  look  back  to  1869,  the  year  in  which  I  became  a  voter,  and 
recall  the  strenuous  opposition  to  civil  service  reform  on  the 
part  of  the  politicians  of  both  parties,  and  the  indifference 
of  the  public,  I  confess  that  I  am  amazed  at  the  progress 
which  has  been  made.  Such  a  reform  is  of  course  effected 
only  by  a  number  of  contributing  causes  and  some  favoring 
circumstances,  but  I  feel  certain  that  it  was  accelerated  by 
the  constant  and  vigorous  support  of  The  Nation. 

I  owe  to  The  Nation  more  than  to  any  other  agency  my 
correct  ideas  on  finance  in  two  crises.  The  first  was  the 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  281 


1C 


greenback  craze"  from  1869  to  1875.  It  was  easy  to  be 
a  hard-money  man  in  Boston  or  New  York,  where  one  might 
imbibe  the  correct  doctrine  as  one  everywhere  takes  in  the 
fundamental  principles  of  civilization  and  morality.  But  it 
was  not  so  in  Ohio,  Indiana,  and  Illinois,  where  the  severe 
money  stringency  before  and  during  the  panic  of  1873,  and 
the  depression  after  it,  caused  many  good  and  representative 
men  to  join  in  the  cry  for  a  larger  issue  of  greenbacks  by 
the  government.  It  required  no  moral  courage  for  the  aver 
age  citizen  to  resist  what  in  1875  seemed  to  be  the  popular 
move,  but  it  did  require  the  correct  knowledge  and  the  for 
cible  arguments  put  forward  weekly  by  The  Nation.  I  do 
not  forget  my  indebtedness  to  John  Sherman,  Carl  Schurz, 
and  Senator  Thurman,  but  Sherman  and  Thurman  were 
not  always  consistent  on  this  question,  and  Schurz 's  voice 
was  only  occasionally  heard;  but  every  seven  days  came 
The  Nation  with  its  unremitting  iteration,  and  it  was  an 
iteration  varied  enough  to  be  always  interesting  and  worthy 
of  study.  As  one  looks  back  over  nearly  forty  years  of  poli 
tics  one  likes  to  recall  the  occasions  when  one  has  done  the 
thing  one's  mature  judgment  fully  approves;  and  I  like  to 
think  that  in  1875  I  refused  to  vote  for  my  party's  candi 
date  for  governor,  the  Democratic  William  Allen,  whose 
platform  was  "that  the  volume  of  currency  be  made  and 
kept  equal  to  the  wants  of  trade." 

A  severer  ordeal  was  the  silver  question  of  1878,  because 
the  argument  for  silver  was  more  weighty  than  that  for 
irredeemable  paper,  and  was  believed  to  be  sound  by  busi 
ness  men  of  both  parties.  I  remember  that  many  represent 
ative  business  men  of  Cleveland  used  to  assemble  around 
the  large  luncheon  table  of  the  Union  Club  and  discuss  the 
pending  silver-coinage  bill,  which  received  the  votes  of  both 
of  the  senators  from  Ohio  and  of  all  her  representatives 


282  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

except  Garfield.  The  gold  men  were  in  a  minority  also  at  the 
luncheon  table,  but,  fortified  by  The  Nation,  we  thought 
that  we  held  our  own  in  this  daily  discussion. 

In  my  conversion  from  a  belief  in  a  protective  tariff  to 
the  advocacy  of  one  for  revenue  only,  I  recognize  an  obli 
gation  to  Godkin,  but  his  was  only  one  of  many  influences. 
I  owe  The  Nation  much  for  its  accurate  knowledge  of  foreign 
affairs,  especially  of  English  politics,  in  which  its  readers 
were  enlightened  by  one  of  the  most  capable  of  living  men, 
Albert  V.  Dicey.  I  am  indebted  to  it  for  sound  ideas  on 
municipal  government,  and  for  its  advocacy  of  many  minor 
measures,  such  for  instance  as  the  International  Copy 
right  Bill.  I  owe  it  something  for  its  later  attitude  on  Re 
construction,  and  its  condemnation  of  the  negro  carpet-bag 
governments  in  the  South.  In  a  word,  The  Nation  was  on 
the  side  of  civilization  and  good  political  morals. 

Confessing  thus  my  great  political  indebtedness  to  Godkin, 
it  is  with  some  reluctance  that  I  present  a  certain  phase  of 
his  thought  which  was  regretted  by  many  of  his  best  friends, 
and  which  undoubtedly  limited  his  influence  in  the  later 
years  of  his  life.  A  knowledge  of  this  shortcoming  is,  how 
ever,  essential  to  a  thorough  comprehension  of  the  man. 
It  is  frequently  said  that  Godkin  rarely,  if  ever,  made  a  re 
traction  or  a  rectification  of  personal  charges  shown  to  be 
incorrect.  A  thorough  search  of  The  Nation's  columns 
would  be  necessary  fully  to  substantiate  this  statement,  but 
my  own  impression,  covering  as  it  does  thirty-three  years7 
reading  of  the  paper  under  Godkin's  control,  inclines  me 
to  believe  in  its  truth,  as  I  do  not  remember  an  instance  of 
the  kind. 

A  grave  fault  of  omission  occurs  to  me  as  showing  a  re 
grettable  bias  in  a  leader  of  intelligent  opinion.  On  January  5, 
1897,  General  Francis  A.  Walker  died.  He  had  served  with 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  283 

credit  as  an  officer  during  our  Civil  War,  and  in  two  thought 
ful  books  had  made  a  valuable  contribution  to  its  military 
history.  He  was  superintendent  of  the  United  States  Cen 
sus  of  1870,  and  did  work  that  statisticians  and  historians 
refer  to  with  gratitude  and  praise.  For  sixteen  years  he 
served  with  honor  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technol 
ogy  as  its  president.  He  was  a  celebrated  political  econo 
mist,  his  books  being  (I  think)  as  well  known  in  England 
as  in  this  country.  Yale,  Amherst,  Harvard,  Columbia, 
St.  Andrews,  and  Dublin  conferred  upon  him  the  degree 
of  LL.D.  Withal  he  served  his  city  with  public  spirit. 
Trinity  Church,  " crowded  and  silent"  in  celebrating  its 
last  service  over  the  dead  body  of  Walker,  witnessed  one  of 
the  three  most  impressive  funerals  which  Boston  has  seen 
for  at  least  sixteen  years  —  a  funeral  conspicuous  for  the 
attendance  of  a  large  number  of  delegates  from  colleges  and 
learned  societies. 

Walker  was  distinctly  of  the  intellectual  £lite  of  the  coun 
try.  But  The  Nation  made  not  the  slightest  reference  to  his 
death.  In  the  issue  of  January  7,  appearing  two  days  later, 
I  looked  for  an  allusion  in  "The  Week/7  and  subsequently 
for  one  of  those  remarkable  and  discriminating  eulogies, 
which  in  smaller  type  follow  the  editorials,  and  for  which  The 
Nation  is  justly  celebrated;  but  there  was  not  one  word. 
You  might  search  the  1897  volume  of  The  Nation  and,  but 
for  a  brief  reference  in  the  April  "Notes"  to  Walker's  an 
nual  report  posthumously  published,  you  would  not  learn 
that  a  great  intellectual  leader  had  passed  away.  I  wrote 
to  a  valued  contributor  of  The  Nation,  a  friend  of  Walker,  of 
Godkin,  and  of  Wendell  P.  Garrison  (the  literary  editor), 
inquiring  if  he  knew  the  reason  for  the  omission,  and  in 
answer  he  could  only  tell  me  that  his  amazement  had  been 
as  great  as  mine.  He  at  first  looked  eagerly,  and,  when 


284  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

the  last  number  came  in  which  a  eulogy  could  possibly 
appear,  he  turned  over  the  pages  of  The  Nation  with  sorrow 
ful  regret,  hardly  believing  his  eyes  that  the  article  he  sought 
was  not  there. 

Now  I  suspect  that  the  reason  of  this  extraordinary  omis 
sion  was  due  to  the  irreconcilable  opinions  of  Walker  and 
Godkin  on  a  question  of  finance.  It  was  a  period  when  the 
contest  between  the  advocates  of  a  single  gold  standard  and 
the  bimetallists  raged  fiercely,  and  the  contest  had  not  been 
fully  settled  by  the  election  of  McKinley  in  1896.  Godkin 
was  emphatically  for  gold,  Walker  equally  emphatic  for  a 
double  standard.  And  they  clashed.  It  is  a  notable  ex 
ample  of  the  peculiarity  of  Godkin,  to  allow  at  the  portal  of 
death  the  one  point  of  political  policy  on  which  he  and 
Walker  disagreed  to  overweigh  the  nine  points  in  which 
they  were  at  one. 

Most  readers  of  The  Nation  noticed  distinctly  that,  from 
1895  on,  its  tone  became  more  pessimistic  and  its  criticism 
was  marked  by  greater  acerbity.  Mr.  Hollo  Ogden  in  his 
biography  shows  that  Godkin's  feeling  of  disappointment 
over  the  progress  of  the  democratic  experiment  in  America, 
and  his  hopelessness  of  our  future,  began  at  an  earlier 
date. 

During  his  first  years  in  the  United  States,  he  had  no 
desire  to  return  to  his  mother  country.  When  the  financial 
fortune  of  The  Nation  was  doubtful,  he  wrote  to  Norton  that 
he  should  not  go  back  to  England  except  as  a  "last  ex 
tremity.  It  would  be  going  back  into  an  atmosphere  that 
I  detest,  and  a  social  system  that  I  have  hated  since  I  was 
fourteen  years  old."  *  In  1889,  after  an  absence  of  twenty- 
seven  years,  he  went  to  England.  The  best  intellectual 
society  of  London  and  Oxford  opened  its  doors  to  him  and 

1  Ogden,  II,  140. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  285 

he  fell  under  its  charm  as  would  any  American  who  was  the 
recipient  of  marked  attentions  from  people  of  such  distinc 
tion.  He  began  to  draw  contrasts  which  were  not  favorable 
to  his  adopted  country.  "I  took  a  walk  along  the  wonder 
ful  Thames  embankment,"  he  wrote,  "a  splendid  work, 
and  I  sighed  to  think  how  impossible  it  would  be  to  get  such 
a  thing  done  in  New  York.  The  differences  in  government 
and  political  manners  are  in  fact  awful,  and  for  me  very 
depressing.  Henry  James  [with  whom  he  stopped  in  Lon 
don]  and  I  talk  over  them  sometimes  'des  larmes  dans  la 
voix.'  "  In  1894,  however,  Godkin  wrote  in  the  Forum: 
"  There  is  probably  no  government  in  the  world  to-day  as 
stable  as  that  of  the  United  States.  The  chief  advantage 
of  democratic  government  is,  in  a  country  like  this,  the 
enormous  force  it  can  command  in  an  emergency."  l  But 
next  year  his  pessimism  is  clearly  apparent.  On  January 
12,  1895,  he  wrote  to  Norton :  "  You  see  I  am  not  sanguine 
about  the  future  of  democracy.  I  think  we  shall  have  a 
long  period  of  decline  like  that  which  followed  (?)  the  fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  then  a  recrudescence  under 
some  other  form  of  society."  2 

A  number  of  things  had  combined  to  affect  him  pro 
foundly.  An  admirer  of  Grover  Cleveland  and  three  times 
a  warm  supporter  of  his  candidacy  for  the  Presidency,  he 
saw  with  regret  the  loss  of  his  hold  on  his  party,  which  was 
drifting  into  the  hands  of  the  advocates  of  free  silver.  Then 
in  December,  1895,  Godkin  lost  faith  in  his  idol.  "I  was 
thunderstruck  by  Cleveland's  message"  on  the  Venezuela 
question,  he  wrote  to  Norton.  His  submission  to  the  Jin 
goes  "is  a  terrible  shock."  3  Later,  in  a  calm  review  of  pass 
ing  events,  he  called  the  message  a  "sudden  declaration  of 

1  Problems  of  Modern  Democracy,  209. 

2  Ogden,  II,  199.  3  Ibid.,  II,  202. 


286  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

war  without  notice  against  Great  Britain."  l  The  danger 
of  such  a  proceeding  he  had  pointed  out  to  Norton:  Our 
"  immense  democracy,  mostly  ignorant  ...  is  constantly 
on  the  brink  of  some  frightful  catastrophe  like  that  which 
overtook  France  in  1870."  2  In  1896  he  was  deeply  dis 
tressed  at  the  country  having  to  choose  for  President  be 
tween  the  arch-protectionist  McKinley  and  the  free-silver 
advocate  Bryan,  for  he  had  spent  a  good  part  of  his  life 
combating  a  protective  tariff  and  advocating  sound  money. 
Though  the  Evening  Post  contributed  powerfully  to  the  elec 
tion  of  McKinley,  from  the  fact  that  its  catechism,  teaching 
financial  truths  in  a  popular  form,  was  distributed  through 
out  the  West  in  immense  quantities  by  the  chairman  of  the 
Republican  National  Committee,  Godkin  himself  refused  to 
vote  for  McKinley  and  put  in  his  ballot  for  Palmer,  the  gold 
Democrat.3 

The  Spanish-American  war  seems  to  have  destroyed  any 
lingering  hope  that  he  had  left  for  the  future  of  American 
democracy.  He  spoke  of  it  as  "a  perfectly  avoidable  war 
forced  on  by  a  band  of  unscrupulous  politicians"  who  had 
behind  them  "a  roaring  mob."  4  The  taking  of  the  Philip 
pines  and  the  subsequent  war  in  these  islands  confirmed 
him  in  his  despair.  In  a  private  letter  written  from  Paris, 
he  said,  "  American  ideals  were  the  intellectual  food  of  my 
youth,  and  to  see  America  converted  into  a  senseless,  Old- 
World  conqueror,  embitters  my  age."  5  To  another  he 
wrote  that  his  former  "high  and  fond  ideals  about  America 
were  now  all  shattered."  6  " Sometimes  he  seemed  to  feel," 
said  his  intimate  friend,  James  Bryce,  "as  though  he  had 
labored  in  vain  for  forty  years."  7 

1  Random  Recollections,  Evening  Post,  December  30, 1899. 
•  Ogden,  II,  202.  8  Ibid.,  II,  214.  *  Ibid.,  II,  238. 

Ibid.,  II,  219.  '  Ibid.,  II,  237.  7  Biographical  Studies,  378. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  287 

Such  regrets  expressed  by  an  honest  and  sincere  man 
with  a  high  ideal  must  command  our  respectful  attention. 
Though  due  in  part  to  old  age  and  enfeebled  health,  they  are 
still  more  attributable  to  his  disappointment  that  the  coun 
try  had  not  developed  in  the  way  that  he  had  marked  out 
for  her.  For  with  men  of  Godkin's  positive  convictions, 
there  is  only  one  way  to  salvation.  Sometimes  such  men 
are  true  prophets;  at  other  times,  while  they  see  clearly 
certain  aspects  of  a  case,  their  narrowness  of  vision  prevents 
them  from  taking  in  the  whole  range  of  possibilities,  es 
pecially  when  the  enthusiasm  of  manhood  is  gone. 

Godkin  took  a  broader  view  in  1868,  which  he  forcibly 
expressed  in  a  letter  to  the  London  Daily  News.  "  There  is 
no  careful  and  intelligent  observer/'  he  wrote,  "  whether  he 
be  a  friend  to  democracy  or  not,  who  can  help  admiring  the 
unbroken  power  with  which  the  popular  common  sense — that 
shrewdness,  or  intelligence,  or  instinct  of  self-preservation,  I 
care  not  what  you  call  it,  which  so  often  makes  the  American 
farmer  a  far  better  politician  than  nine  tenths  of  the  best 
read  European  political  philosophers  —  works  under  all 
this  tumult  and  confusion  of  tongues.  The  newspapers 
and  politicians  fret  and  fume  and  shout  and  denounce ;  but 
the  great  mass,  the  nineteen  or  twenty  millions,  work  away 
in  the  fields  and  workshops,  saying  little,  thinking  much, 
hardy,  earnest,  self-reliant,  very  tolerant,  very  indulgent, 
very  shrewd,  but  ready  whenever  the  government  needs  it, 
with  musket,  or  purse,  or  vote,  as  the  case  may  be,  laughing 
and  cheering  occasionally  at  public  meetings,  but  when  you 
meet  them  individually  on  the  highroad  or  in  their  own 
houses,  very  cool,  then,  sensible  men,  filled  with  no  delusions, 
carried  away  by  no  frenzies,  believing  firmly  in  the  future 
greatness  and  glory  of  the  republic,  but  holding  to  no  other 
article  of  faith  as  essential  to  political  salvation." 


288  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Before  continuing  the  quotation  I  wish  to  call  attention 
to  the  fact  that  Godkin's  illustration  was  more  effective  in 
1868  than  now:  then  there  was  a  solemn  and  vital  meaning 
to  the  prayers  offered  up  for  persons  going  to  sea  that  they 
might  be  preserved  from  the  dangers  of  the  deep.  "  Every 
now  and  then,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "as  one  watches  the 
political  storms  in  the  United  States,  one  is  reminded  of 
one's  feelings  as  one  lies  in  bed  on  a  stormy  night  in  an  ocean 
steamer  in  a  head  wind.  Each  blow  of  the  sea  shakes  the 
ship  from  stem  to  stern,  and  every  now  and  then  a  tremen 
dous  one  seems  to  paralyze  her.  The  machinery  seems  to 
stop  work ;  there  is  a  dead  pause,  and  you  think  for  a  mo 
ment  the  end  has  come;  but  the  throbbing  begins  once 
more,  and  if  you  go  up  on  deck  and  look  down  in  the 
hold,  you  see  the  firemen  and  engineers  at  their  posts, 
apparently  unconscious  of  anything  but  their  work,  and 
as  sure  of  getting  into  port  as  if  there  was  not  a  ripple  on 
the  water." 

This  letter  of  Godkin's  was  written  on  January  8,  1868, 
when  Congress  was  engaged  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  South 
on  the  basis  of  negro  suffrage,  when  the  quarrel  between  Con 
gress  and  President  Johnson  was  acute  and  his  impeachment 
not  two  months  off.  At  about  this  time  Godkin  set  down 
Evarts's  opinion  that "  we  are  witnessing  the  decline  of  public 
morality  which  usually  presages  revolution,"  and  reported 
that  Ho  wells  was  talking  "  despondently  like  everybody 
else  about  the  condition  of  morals  and  manners."  1  Of  like 
tenor  was  the  opinion  of  an  arch-conservative,  George  Tick- 
nor,  written  in  1869,  which  bears  a  resemblance  to  the  lam 
entation  of  Godkin's  later  years.  "The  civil  war  of  '61," 
wrote  Ticknor,  "has  made  a  great  gulf  between  what  hap 
pened  before  it  in  our  century  and  what  has  happened 
1  Ogden,  I,  301,  307. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  289 

since,  or  what  is  likely  to  happen  hereafter.  It  does  not 
seem  to  me  as  if  I  were  living  in  the  country  in  which  I  was 
born,  or  in  which  I  received  whatever  I  ever  got  of  political 
education  or  principles.  Webster  seems  to  have  been  the 
last  of  the  Romans. "  1 

In  1868  Godkin  was  an  optimist,  having  a  cogent  answer 
to  all  gloomy  predictions ;  from  1895  to  1902  he  was  a  pessi 
mist;  yet  reasons  just  as  strong  may  be  adduced  for  con 
sidering  the  future  of  the  country  secure  in  the  later  as  were 
urged  in  the  earlier  period.  But  as  Godkin  grew  older,  he 
became  a  moral  censor,  and  it  is  characteristic  of  censors  to 
exaggerate  both  the  evil  of  the  present  and  the  good  of  the 
past.  Thus  in  1899  he  wrote  of  the  years  1857-1860: 
"The  air  was  full  of  the  real  Americanism.  The  American 
gospel  was  on  people's  lips  and  was  growing  with  fervor. 
Force  was  worshiped,  but  it  was  moral  force :  it  was  the  force 
of  reason,  of  humanity,  of  human  equality,  of  a  good  ex 
ample.  The  abolitionist  gospel  seemed  to  be  permeating 
the  views  of  the  American  people,  and  overturning  and 
destroying  the  last  remaining  traditions  of  the  old-world 
public  morality.  It  was  really  what  might  be  called  the 
golden  age  of  America."  2  These  were  the  days  of  slavery. 
James  Buchanan  was  President.  The  internal  policy  of 
the  party  in  power  was  expressed  in  the  Dred  Scott  decision 
and  the  attempt  to  force  slavery  on  Kansas;  the  foreign 
policy,  in  the  Ostend  Manifesto,  which  declared  that  if  Spain 
would  not  sell  Cuba,  the  United  States  would  take  it  by  force. 
The  rule  in  the  civil  service  was,  "to  the  victors  belong  the 
spoils."  And  New  York  City,  where  Godkin  resided,  had 
for  its  mayor  Fernando  Wood. 

In  this  somewhat  rambling  paper  I  have  subjected  Godkin 

1  Life  and  Letters,  II,  485. 

2  Random  Recollections,  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899. 


290  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

to  a  severe  test  by  a  contrast  of  his  public  and  private  utter 
ances  covering  many  years,  not  however  with  the  intention 
of  accusing  him  of  inconsistency.  Ferrero  writes  that  his 
torians  of  our  day  find  it  easy  to  expose  the  contradictions 
of  Cicero,  but  they  forget  that  probably  as  much  could 
be  said  of  his  contemporaries,  if  we  possessed  also  their 
private  correspondence.  Similarly,  it  is  a  pertinent 
question  how  many  journalists  and  how  many  public 
men  would  stand  as  well  as  Godkin  in  this  matter  of 
consistency  if  we  possessed  the  same  abundant  records  of 
their  activity? 

The  more  careful  the  study  of  Godkin's  utterances,  the 
less  will  be  the  irritation  felt  by  men  who  love  and  believe 
in  their  country.  It  is  evident  that  he  was  a  born  critic, 
and  his  private  correspondence  is  full  of  expressions  showing 
that  if  he  had  been  conducting  a  journal  in  England,  his 
criticism  of  certain  phases  of  English  policy  would  have 
been  as  severe  as  those  which  he  indulged  in  weekly  at  the 
expense  of  this  country.  "How  Ireland  sits  heavy  on  your 
soul!"  he  wrote  to  James  Bryce.  "Salisbury  was  an  ut 
terly  discredited  Foreign  Secretary  when  you  brought  up 
Home  Rule.  Now  he  is  one  of  the  wisest  of  men.  Balfour 
and  Chamberlain  have  all  been  lifted  into  eminence  by 
opposition  to  Home  Rule  simply."  To  Professor  Norton : 
"Chamberlain  is  a  capital  specimen  of  the  rise  of  an  un 
scrupulous  politician."  Again:  "The  fall  of  England  into 
the  hands  of  a  creature  like  Chamberlain  recalls  the  capture 
of  Rome  by  Alaric."  To  another  friend :  "I  do  not  like 
to  talk  about  the  Boer  War,  it  is  too  painful.  .  .  .  When 
I  do  speak  of  the  war  my  language  becomes  unfit  for  publi 
cation."  On  seeing  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  of  Wales 
driving  through  the  gardens  at  Windsor,  his  comment  was 
"Fat,  useless  royalty;"  and  in  1897  he  wrote  from  England 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  291 

to  Arthur  Sedgwick,  "  There  are  many  things  here  which 
reconcile  me  to  America."  1 

In  truth,  much  of  his  criticism  of  America  is  only  an  elab 
oration  of  his  criticism  of  democracy.  In  common  with 
many  Europeans  born  at  about  the  same  time,  who  began 
their  political  life  as  radicals,  he  shows  his  keen  disap 
pointment  that  democracy  has  not  regenerated  mankind. 
"  There  is  not  a  country  in  the  world,  living  under  parlia 
mentary  government,"  he  wrote,  "  which  has  not  begun  to 
complain  of  the  decline  in  the  quality  of  its  legislators. 
More  and  more,  it  is  said,  the  work  of  government  is  falling 
into  the  hands  of  men  to  whom  even  small  pay  is  important, 
and  who  are  suspected  of  adding  to  their  income  by  corrup 
tion.  The  withdrawal  of  the  more  intelligent  class  from 
legislative  duties  is  more  and  more  lamented,  and  the  com 
plaint  is  somewhat  justified  by  the  mass  of  crude,  hasty, 
incoherent,  and  unnecessary  laws  which  are  poured  on  the 
world  at  every  session."  2 

I  have  thus  far  spoken  only  of  the  political  influence  of 
The  Nation,  but  its  literary  department  was  equally  impor 
tant.  Associated  with  Godkin  from  the  beginning  was 
Wendell  P.  Garrison,  who  became  literary  editor  of  the 
journal,  and,  who,  Godkin  wrote  in  1871,  "has  really  toiled 
for  six  years  with  the  fidelity  of  a  Christian  martyr  and 
upon  the  pay  of  an  oysterman."  3  I  have  often  heard  the 
literary  criticism  of  The  Nation  called  destructive  like  the 
political,  but,  it  appears  to  me,  with  less  reason.  Books 
for  review  were  sent  to  experts  in  different  parts  of  the 
country,  and  the  list  of  contributors  included  many  profes 
sors  from  various  colleges.  While  the  editor,  I  believe, 

1  Ogden,  II,  30, 136,  213,  214,  247,  253. 
Unforeseen  Tendencies  of  Democracy,  117. 
3  Ogden,  II,  51. 


292  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

retained,  and  sometimes  exercised,  the  right  to  omit  parts 
of  the  review  and  make  some  additions,  yet  writers  drawn 
from  so  many  sources  must  have  preserved  their  own  in 
dividuality.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  The  Nation  gave  you 
the  impression  of  having  been  entirely  written  by  one  man ; 
but  whatever  there  is  more  than  fanciful  in  that  impression 
must  have  arisen  from  the  general  agreement  between  the 
editor  and  the  contributors.  Paul  Leicester  Ford  once  told 
me  that,  when  he  wrote  a  criticism  for  The  Nation,  he  un 
consciously  took  on  The  Nation's  style,  but  he  could  write  in 
that  way  for  no  other  journal,  nor  did  he  ever  fall  into  it  in 
his  books.  Garrison  was  much  more  tolerant  than  is  some 
times  supposed.  I  know  of  his  sending  many  books  to  two 
men,  one  of  whom  differed  from  him  radically  on  the 
negro  question  and  the  other  on  socialism. 

It  is  only  after  hearing  much  detraction  of  the  literary  de 
partment  of  The  Nation,  and  after  considerable  reflection, 
that  I  have  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  it  came  somewhat 
near  to  realizing  criticism  as  defined  by  Matthew  Arnold, 
thus:  " A  disinterested  endeavor  to  learn  and  propagate 
the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the  world."  1  I  am 
well  aware  that  it  was  not  always  equal,  and  I  remember 
two  harsh  reviews  which  ought  not  to  have  been  printed; 
but  this  simply  proves  that  the  editor  was  human  and  The 
Nation  was  not  perfect.  I  feel  safe,  however,  in  saying  that 
if  the  best  critical  reviews  of  The  Nation  were  collected  and 
printed  in  book  form,  they  would  show  an  aspiration  after 
the  standard  erected  by  Sainte-Beuve  and  Matthew  Arnold. 

Again  I  must  appeal  to  my  individual  experience.  The 
man  who  lived  in  the  middle  West  for  the  twenty-five  years 
between  1865  and  1890  needed  the  literary  department  of 
The  Nation  more  than  one  who  lived  in  Boston  or  New  York. 

1  Essays,  38. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  293 

Most  of  the  books  written  in  America  were  by  New  England, 
New  York,  and  Philadelphia  authors,  and  in  those  com 
munities  literary  criticism  was  evolved  by  social  contact  in 
clubs  and  other  gatherings.  We  had  nothing  of  the  sort  in 
Cleveland,  where  a  writer  of  books  walking  down  Euclid 
Avenue  would  have  been  stared  at  as  a  somewhat  remark 
able  personage.  The  literary  columns  of  The  Nation  were 
therefore  our  most  important  link  between  our  practical 
life  and  the  literary  world.  I  used  to  copy  into  my  Index 
Rerum  long  extracts  from  important  reviews,  in  which  the 
writers  appeared  to  have  a  thorough  grasp  of  their  subjects; 
and  these  I  read  and  re-read  as  I  would  a  significant  passage 
in  a  favorite  book.  In  the  days  when  many  of  us  were  pro 
foundly  influenced  by  Herbert  Spencer's  "  Sociology,"  I  was 
somewhat  astonished  to  read  one  week  in  The  Nation,  in  a 
review  of  Pollock's  "  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Politics," 
these  words:  " Herbert  Spencer's  contributions  to  political 
and  historical  science  seem  to  us  mere  commonplaces,  some 
times  false,  sometimes  true,  but  in  both  cases  trying  to  dis 
guise  their  essential  flatness  and  commonness  in  a  garb  of 
dogmatic  formalism."  *  Such  an  opinion,  evidencing  a  con 
flict  between  two  intellectual  guides,  staggered  me,  and  it 
was  with  some  curiosity  that  I  looked  subsequently,  when 
the  Index  to  Periodicals  came  out,  to  see  who  had  the  temer 
ity  thus  to  belittle  Spencer — the  greatest  political  philoso 
pher,  so  some  of  his  disciples  thought,  since  Aristotle. 
I  ascertained  that  the  writer  of  the  review  was  James  Bryce, 
and  whatever  else  might  be  thought,  it  could  not  be  denied 
that  the  controversy  was  one  between  giants.  I  can,  I 
think,  date  the  beginning  of  my  emancipation  from  Spencer 
from  that  review  in  1891. 

In  the  same  year  I  read  a  discriminating  eulogy  of  George 
1  Vol.  52,  p.  267. 


294  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Bancroft,  ending  with  an  intelligent  criticism  of  his  history, 
which  produced  on  me  a  marked  impression.  The  reviewer 
wrote:  Bancroft  falls  into  "that  error  so  common  with  the 
graphic  school  of  historians  —  the  exaggerated  estimate  of 
manuscripts  or  fragmentary  material  at  the  expense  of  what 
is  printed  and  permanent.  .  .  .  But  a  fault  far  more  seri 
ous  than  this  is  one  which  Mr.  Bancroft  shared  with  his 
historical  contemporaries,  but  in  which  he  far  exceeded  any 
of  them  —  an  utter  ignoring  of  the  very  meaning  and 
significance  of  a  quotation  mark."  1  Sound  and  scientific 
doctrine  is  this ;  and  the  whole  article  exhibited  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  our  colonial  and  revolutionary  history  which 
inspired  confidence  in  the  conclusions  of  the  writer,  who,  I 
later  ascertained,  was  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson. 

These  two  examples  could  be  multiplied  at  length.  There 
were  many  reviewers  from  Harvard  and  Yale ;  and  undoubt 
edly  other  Eastern  colleges  were  well  represented.  The 
University  of  Wisconsin  furnished  at  least  one  contributor, 
as  probably  did  the  University  of  Michigan  and  other  Western 
colleges.  Men  in  Washington,  New  York,  and  Boston,  not 
in  academic  life,  were  drawn  upon ;  a  soldier  of  the  Civil  War, 
living  in  Cincinnati,  a  man  of  affairs,  sent  many  reviews. 
James  Bryce  was  an  occasional  contributor,  and  at  least 
three  notable  reviews  came  from  the  pen  of  Albert  V.  Dicey. 
In  1885,  Godkin,  in  speaking  of  The  Nation's  department  of 
Literature  and  Art,  wrote  that  "the  list  of  those  who  have 
contributed  to  the  columns  of  the  paper  from  the  first  issue 
to  the  present  day  contains  a  large  number  of  the  most 
eminent  names  in  American  literature,  science,  art,  phi 
losophy,  and  law."  2  With  men  so  gifted,  and  chosen  from 
all  parts  of  the  country,  uniformly  destructive  criticism 
could  not  have  prevailed.  Among  them  were  optimists  as 

1  Vol.  52,  p.  66.  2  June  25,  1885. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  295 

well  as  pessimists,  and  men  as  independent  in  thought  as 
was  Godkin  himself. 

Believing  that  Godkin's  thirty-five  years  of  critical  work 
was  of  great  benefit  to  this  country,  I  have  sometimes  asked 
myself  whether  the  fact  of  his  being  a  foreigner  has  made 
it  more  irritating  to  many  good  people,  who  term  his  criti 
cism  " fault-finding"  or  "scolding."  Although  he  married 
in  America  and  his  home  life  was  centered  here,  he  confessed 
that  in  many  essential  things  it  was  a  foreign  country.1 
Some  readers  who  admired  The  Nation  told  Mr.  Bryce  that 
they  did  not  want  "to  be  taught  by  a  European  how  to  run 
this  republic."  But  Bryce,  who  in  this  matter  is  the  most 
competent  of  judges,  intimates  that  Godkin's  foreign  educa 
tion,  giving  him  detachment  and  perspective,  was  a  distinct 
advantage.  If  it  will  help  any  one  to  a  better  appreciation 
of  the  man,  let  Godkin  be  regarded  as  "a  chiel  amang 
us  takin'  notes";  as  an  observer  not  so  philosophic  as 
Tocqueville,  not  so  genial  and  sympathetic  as  Bryce.  Yet, 
whether  we  look  upon  him  as  an  Irishman,  an  Englishman, 
or  an  American,  let  us  rejoice  that  he  cast  his  lot  with  us, 
and  that  we  have  had  the  benefit  of  his  illuminating  pen. 
He  was  not  always  right ;  he  was  sometimes  unjust ;  he  often 
told  the  truth  with  "needless  asperity,"  2  as  Parkman  put 
it;  but  his  merits  so  outweighed  his  defects  that  he  had  a 
marked  influence  on  opinion,  and  probably  on  history, 
during  his  thirty-five  years  of  journalistic  work,  when,  ac 
cording  to  James  Bryce,  he  showed  a  courage  such  as  is 
rare  everywhere.3  General  J.  D.  Cox,  who  had  not  missed 
a  number  of  The  Nation  from  1865  to  1899,  wrote  to  Godkin, 
on  hearing  of  his  prospective  retirement  from  the  Evening 
Post,  "I  really  believe  that  earnest  men,  all  over  the  land, 
whether  they  agree  with  you  or  differ,  will  unite  in  the 

1  Ogden,  II,  116.  2  Ibid.,  I,  252.  3  Biographical  Studies,  370. 


296  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

exclamation  which  Lincoln  made  as  to  Grant,  'We  can't 
spare  this  man  —  he  fights.'  ' 

Our  country,  wrapped  up  in  no  smug  complacency,  lis 
tened  to  this  man,  respected  him  and  supported  him,  and 
on  his  death  a  number  of  people  were  glad  to  unite  to  endow 
a  lectureship  in  his  honor  in  Harvard  University. 

In  closing,  I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  what  may  be 
called  Godkin's  farewell  words,  printed  forty  days  before 
the  attack  of  cerebral  hemorrhage  which  ended  his  active 
career.  "The  election  of  the  chief  officer  of  the  state  by 
universal  suffrage,"  he  wrote,  "by  a  nation  approaching  one 
hundred  millions,  is  not  simply  a  novelty  in  the  history  of 
man's  efforts  to  govern  himself,  but  an  experiment  of  which 
no  one  can  foresee  the  result.  The  mass  is  yearly  becoming 
more  and  more  difficult  to  move.  The  old  arts  of  persua 
sion  are  already  ceasing  to  be  employed  on  it.  Presidential 
elections  are  less  and  less  carried  by  speeches  and  articles. 
The  American  people  is  a  less  instructed  people  than  it 
used  to  be.  The  necessity  for  drilling,  organizing,  and  guid 
ing  it,  in  order  to  extract  the  vote  from  it  is  becoming  plain ; 
and  out  of  this  necessity  has  arisen  the  boss  system,  which 
is  now  found  in  existence  everywhere,  is  growing  more 
powerful,  and  has  thus  far  resisted  all  attempts  to  over 
throw  it." 

I  shall  not  stop  to  urge  a  qualification  of  some  of  these 
statements,  but  will  proceed  to  the  brighter  side  of  our  case, 
which  Godkin,  even  in  his  pessimistic  mood,  could  not  fail 
to  see  distinctly.  "On  the  other  hand,"  he  continued,  "I 
think  the  progress  made  by  the  colleges  throughout  the 
country,  big  and  little,  both  in  the  quality  of  the  in 
struction  and  in  the  amount  of  money  devoted  to  books, 
laboratories,  and  educational  facilities  of  all  kinds,  is  some- 

1  Ogden,  II,  229. 


EDWIN  LAWRENCE  GODKIN  297 

thing  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  civilized  world. 
And  the  progress  of  the  nation  in  all  the  arts,  except  that  of 
government,  in  science,  in  literature,  in  commerce,  in  inven 
tion,  is  something  unprecedented  and  becomes  daily  more 
astonishing.  How  it  is  that  this  splendid  progress  does  not 
drag  on  politics  with  it  I  do  not  profess  to  know."  1 

Let  us  be  as  hopeful  as  was  Godkin  in  his  earlier  days,  and 
rest  assured  that  intellectual  training  will  eventually  exert 
its  power  in  politics,  as  it  has  done  in  business  and  in  other 
domains  of  active  life. 

1  Evening  Post,  December  30,  1899. 


WHO  BURNED   COLUMBIA? 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
November  meeting  of  1901,  and  printed  in  the  American  His 
torical  Review  of  April,  1902. 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA? 

THE  story  goes  that  when  General  Sherman  lived  in  New 
York  City,  which  was  during  the  last  five  years  of  his  life, 
he  attended  one  night  a  dinner  party  at  which  he  and  an 
ex-Confederate  general  who  had  fought  against  him  in  the 
southwest  were  the  chief  guests;  and  that  an  Englishman 
present  asked  in  perfect  innocence  the  question,  Who 
burned  Columbia?  Had  bombshells  struck  the  tents  of 
these  generals  during  the  war,  they  would  not  have  caused 
half  the  commotion  in  their  breasts  that  did  this  question 
put  solely  with  the  desire  of  information.  The  emphatic 
language  of  Sherman  interlarded  with  the  oaths  he  uttered 
spontaneously,  the  bitter  charges  of  the  Confederate,  the 
pounding  of  the  table,  the  dancing  of  the  glasses,  told  the 
Englishman  that  the  bloody  chasm  had  not  been  entirely 
filled.  With  a  little  variation  and  with  some  figurative 
meaning,  he  might  have  used  the  words  of  lago  :  "  Friends  all 
but  now,  even  now  in  peace ;  and  then  but  now  as  if  some 
planet  had  outwitted  men,  tilting  at  one  another's  breast  in 
opposition.  I  cannot  speak  any  beginning  to  this  peevish 
odds." 

But  the  question  which  disturbed  the  New  York  dinner 
party  is  a  delight  to  the  historian.  Feeling  that  history  may 
be  known  best  when  there  are  most  documents,  he  may  de 
rive  the  greatest  pleasure  from  a  perusal  of  the  mass  of  evi 
dence  bearing  on  this  disputed  point ;  and  if  he  is  of  Northern 
birth  he  ought  to  approach  the  subject  with  absolute  can 
dor.  Of  a  Southerner  who  had  himself  lost  property  or 

301 


302  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

whose  parents  had  lost  property,  through  Sherman's  cam 
paign  of  invasion,  it  would  be  asking  too  much  to  expect 
him  to  consider  this  subject  in  a  judicial  spirit.  Even  Trent, 
a  moderate  and  impartial  Southern  writer  whose  tone  is  a 
lesson  to  us  all,  when  referring,  in  his  life  of  William  Gilmore 
Simms,  to  "the  much  vexed  question,  Who  burned  Colum 
bia,"  used  words  of  the  sternest  condemnation. 

Sherman,  with  his  army  of  60,000,  left  Savannah  February 
1, 1865,  and  reached  the  neighborhood  of  Columbia  February 
16.  The  next  day  Columbia  was  evacuated  by  the  Confed 
erates,  occupied  by  troops  of  the  fifteenth  corps  of  the  Fed 
eral  army,  and  by  the  morning  of  the  18th  either  three 
fifths  or  two  thirds  of  the  town  lay  in  ashes.  The  facts 
contained  in  these  two  sentences  are  almost  the  only  ones 
undisputed.  We  shall  consider  this  episode  most  curiously 
if  we  take  first  Sherman's  account,  then  Wade  Hampton's, 
ending  with  what  I  conceive  to  be  a  true  relation. 

The  city  was  surrendered  by  the  mayor  and  three  alder 
men  to  Colonel  George  A.  Stone  at  the  head  of  his  brigade. 
Soon  afterwards  Sherman  and  Howard,  the  commander  of 
the  right  wing  of  the  army,  rode  into  the  city ;  they  observed 
piles  of  cotton  burning,  and  Union  soldiers  and  citizens  work 
ing  to  extinguish  the  fire,  which  was  partially  subdued. 
Let  Sherman  speak  for  himself  in  the  first  account  that  he 
wrote,  which  was  his  report  of  April  4,  1865:  "Before  one 
single  public  building  had  been  fired  by  order,  the  smoul 
dering  fires  [cotton]  set  by  Hampton's  order  were  rekindled 
by  the  wind,  and  communicated  to  the  buildings  around. 
[Wade  Hampton  commanded  the  Confederate  cavalry.] 
About  dark  they  began  to  spread,  and  got  beyond  the 
control  of  the  brigade  on  duty  within  the  city.  The  whole 
of  Woods'  division  was  brought  in,  but  it  was  found  im 
possible  to  check  the  flames,  which,  by  midnight,  had  be- 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  303 

come  unmanageable,  and  raged  until  about  4  A.M.,  when  the 
wind  subsiding,  they  were  got  under  control. 

"I  was  up  nearly  all  night,  and  saw  Generals  Howard, 
Logan,  Woods,  and  others,  laboring  to  save  houses  and  pro 
tect  families  thus  suddenly  deprived  of  shelter,  and  even  of 
bedding  and  wearing  apparel.  I  disclaim  on  the  part  of 
my  army  any  agency  in  this  fire,  but,  on  the  contrary,  claim 
that  we  saved  what  of  Columbia  remains  unconsumed.  And 
without  hesitation  I  charge  General  Wade  Hampton  with 
having  burned  his  own  city  of  Columbia,  not  with  a  mali 
cious  intent  or  as  the  manifestation  of  a  silly  '  Roman  stoi 
cism/  but  from  folly,  and  want  of  sense,  in  filling  it  with 
lint,  cotton,  and  tinder.  Our  officers  and  men  on  duty 
worked  well  to  extinguish  the  flames;  but  others  not  on 
duty,  including  the  officers  who  had  long  been  imprisoned 
there,  rescued  by  us,  may  have  assisted  in  spreading  the  fire 
after  it  had  once  begun,  and  may  have  indulged  in  uncon 
cealed  joy  to  see  the  ruin  of  the  capital  of  South  Carolina." 
Howard,  in  his  report,  with  some  modification  agrees  with 
his  chief,  and  the  account  in  "The  March  to  the  Sea"  of 
General  Cox,  whose  experience  and  training  fitted  him  well 
to  weigh  the  evidence,  gives  at  least  a  partial  confirmation 
to  Sherman's  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  fire. 

I  have  not,  however,  discovered  sufficient  evidence  to 
support  the  assertion  of  Sherman  that  Wade  Hampton 
ordered  the  cotton  in  the  streets  of  Columbia  to  be  burned. 
Nor  do  I  believe  Sherman  knew  a  single  fact  on  which  he 
might  base  so  positive  a  statement.1  It  had  generally  been 
the  custom  for  the  Confederates  in  their  retreat  to  burn 


1  In  a  letter  presented  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  (some  while 
before  April  21, 1866)  Sherman  said,  "  I  saw  in  your  Columbia  newspaper  the 
printed  order  of  General  Wade  Hampton  that  on  the  approach  of  the  Yankee 
army  all  the  cotton  should  be  burned  "  (South.  Hist.  Soc.  Papers,  VII,  156). 


304  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

cotton  to  prevent  its  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  invading 
army,  and  because  such  was  the  general  rule  Sherman 
assumed  that  it  had  been  applied  in  this  particular  case.  This 
assumption  suited  his  interest,  as  he  sought  a  victim  to  whom 
he  might  charge  the  burning  of  Columbia.  His  statement 
in  his  "Memoirs,"  published  in  1875,  is  a  delicious  bit  of  his 
torical  naivete".  "In  my  official  report  of  this  conflagra 
tion,"  he  wrote,  "I  distinctly  charged  it  to  General  Wade 
Hampton,  and  confess  I  did  so  pointedly,  to  shake  the  faith 
of  his  people  in  him,  for  he  was  in  my  opinion  boastful  and 
professed  to  be  the  special  champion  of  South  Carolina." 

Instead  of  Hampton  giving  an  order  to  burn  the  cotton, 
I  am  satisfied  that  he  urged  Beauregard,  the  general  in  com 
mand,  to  issue  an  order  that  this  cotton  should  not  be  burned, 
lest  the  fire  might  spread  to  the  shops  and  houses,  which  for 
the  most  part  were  built  of  wood,  and  I  am  further  satisfied 
that  such  an  order  was  given.  Unfortunately  the  evidence 
for  this  is  not  contemporary.  No  such  order  is  printed  in  the 
"Official  Records,"  and  I  am  advised  from  the  War  Depart 
ment  that  no  such  order  has  been  found.  The  nearest  evi 
dence  to  the  time  which  I  have  discovered  is  a  letter  of 
Wade  Hampton  of  April  21,  1866,  and  one  of  Beauregard 
of  May  2,  1866.  Since  these  dates,  there  is  an  abundance 
of  evidence,  some  of  it  sworn  testimony,  and  while  it  is  mixed 
up  with  inaccurate  statements  on  another  point,  and  all  of  it 
is  of  the  nature  of  recollections,  I  cannot  resist  the  conclu 
sion  that  Beauregard  and  Hampton  gave  such  an  order. 
It  was  unquestionably  the  wise  thing  to  do.  There  was  ab 
solutely  no  object  in  burning  the  cotton,  as  the  Federal 
troops  could  not  carry  it  with  them  and  could  not  ship  it  to 
any  seaport  which  was  under  Union  control. 

An  order  of  Beauregard  issued  two  days  after  the  burning  of 
Columbia  and  printed  in  the  "Official  Records"  shows  that 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  305 

the  policy  of  burning  cotton  to  keep  it  out  of  the  hands  of 
Sherman's  army  had  been  abandoned.  Sherman's  charge, 
then,  that  Wade  Hampton  burned  Columbia,  falls  to  the 
ground.  The  other  part  of  his  account,  in  which  he  main 
tained  that  the  fire  spread  to  the  buildings  from  the  smol 
dering  cotton  rekindled  by  the  wind,  which  was  blowing  a 
gale,  deserves  more  respect.  His  report  saying  that  he 
saw  cotton  afire  in  the  streets  was  written  April  4,  1865, 
and  Howard's  in  which  the  same  fact  is  stated  was  written 
April  1,  very  soon  after  the  event,  when  their  recollection 
would  be  fresh.  All  of  the  Southern  evidence  (except  one 
statement,  the  most  important  of  all)  is  to  the  effect  that 
no  cotton  was  burning  until  after  the  Federal  troops 
entered  the  city.  Many  Southerners  in  their  testimony 
before  the  British  and  American  mixed  commission  under 
examination  and  cross-examination  swear  to  this;  and 
Wade  Hampton  swears  that  he  was  one  of  the  last  Confed 
erates  to  leave  the  city,  and  that,  when  he  left,  no  cotton 
was  afire,  and  he  knew  that  it  was  not  fired  by  his  men. 
But  this  testimony  was  taken  in  1872  and  1873,  and  may  be 
balanced  by  the  sworn  testimony  of  Sherman,  Howard,  and 
other  Union  officers  before  the  same  commission  in  1872. 

The  weight  of  the  evidence  already  referred  to  would 
seem  to  me  to  show  that  cotton  was  afire  when  the  Federal 
troops  entered  Columbia,  but  a  contemporary  statement  of 
a  Confederate  officer  puts  it  beyond  doubt.  Major  Cham- 
bliss,  who  was  endeavoring  to  secure  the  means  of  transpor 
tation  for  the  Confederate  ordnance  and  ordnance  stores, 
wrote,  in  a  letter  of  February  20,  that  at  three  o'clock  on 
the  morning  of  February  17,  which  was  a  number  of  hours 
before  the  Union  soldiers  entered  Columbia,  "the  city  was 
illuminated  with  burning  cotton."  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  the  burning  cotton  in  the  streets  of  Columbia  was  the 


306  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

cause  of  the  fire  which  destroyed  the  city.  When  we  come 
to  the  probably  correct  account  of  the  incident,  we  shall  see 
that  the  preponderance  of  the  evidence  points  to  another 
cause. 

February  27,  ten  days  after  the  fire,  Wade  Hampton,  in  a 
letter  to  Sherman,  charged  him  with  having  permitted  the 
burning  of  Columbia,  if  he  did  not  order  it  directly ;  and  this 
has  been  iterated  later  by  many  Southern  writers.  The 
correspondence  between  Halleck  and  Sherman  is  cited  to 
show  premeditation  on  the  part  of  the  general.  "  Should 
you  capture  Charleston,"  wrote  Halleck,  December  18,  1864, 
"I  hope  that  by  some  accident  the  place  may  be  destroyed, 
and  if  a  little  salt  should  be  sown  upon  the  site  it  may  pre 
vent  the  growth  of  future  crops  of  nullification  and  secession." 
Sherman  thus  replied  six  days  later:  "I  will  bear  in  mind 
your  hint  as  to  Charleston,  and  don't  think  salt  will  be 
necessary.  When  I  move,  the  Fifteenth  Corps  will  be  on  the 
right  of  the  Right  Wing,  and  their  position  will  bring  them 
naturally  into  Charleston  first ;  and  if  you  have  watched  the 
history  of  that  corps  you  will  have  remarked  that  they  gen 
erally  do  their  work  up  pretty  well.  The  truth  is,  the  whole 
army  is  burning  with  an  insatiable  desire  to  wreak  vengeance 
on  South  Carolina.  I  almost  tremble  at  her  fate,  but  feel 
that  she  deserves  all  that  seems  in  store  for  her.  ...  I 
look  upon  Columbia  as  quite  as  bad  as  Charleston." 

The  evidence  from  many  points  of  view  corroborating 
this  statement  of  the  feeling  of  the  army  towards  South 
Carolina  is  ample.  The  rank  and  file  of  Sherman's  army 
were  men  of  some  education  and  intelligence;  they  were 
accustomed  to  discuss  public  matters,  weigh  reasons,  and 
draw  conclusions.  They  thought  that  South  Carolina  had 
brought  on  the  Civil  War,  was  responsible  for  the  cost  and 
bloodshed  of  it,  and  no  punishment  for  her  could  be  too  se- 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  307 

vere.  That  was  likewise  the  sentiment  of  the  officers.  A  char 
acteristic  expression  of  the  feeling  may  be  found  in  a  home 
letter  of  Colonel  Charles  F.  Morse,  of  the  second  Massachu 
setts,  who  speaks  of  the  "  miserable,  rebellious  State  of  South 
Carolina."  "  Pity  for  these  inhabitants/7  he  further  writes, 
"I  have  none.  In  the  first  place,  they  are  rebels,  and  I  am 
almost  prepared  to  agree  with  Sherman  that  a  rebel  has  no 
rights,  not  even  the  right  to  live  except  by  our  permission." 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  Southern  writers,  smarting  at 
the  loss  caused  by  Sherman's  campaign  of  invasion,  should 
believe  that  Sherman  connived  at  the  destruction  of  Colum 
bia.  But  they  are  wrong  in  that  belief.  The  general's 
actions  were  not  so  bad  as  his  words.  Before  his  troops 
made  their  entrance  he  issued  this  order:  " General  Howard 
will  .  .  .  occupy  Columbia,  destroy  the  public  buildings, 
railroad  property,  manufacturing  and  machine  shops,  but 
will  spare  libraries  and  asylums  and  private  dwellings." 
That  Sherman  was  entirely  sincere  when  he  gave  this  order, 
and  that  his  general  officers  endeavored  to  carry  it  out  can 
not  be  questioned.  A  statement  which  he  made  under  oath 
in  1872  indicates  that  he  did  not  connive  at  the  destruction 
of  Columbia.  "If  I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  burn  Colum 
bia,"  he  declared,  "I  would  have  burnt  it  with  no  more  feel 
ing  than  I  would  a  common  prairie  dog  village;  but  I  did 
not  do  it." 

Other  words  of  his  exhibit  without  disguise  his  feelings 
in  regard  to  the  occurrence  which  the  South  has  regarded  as 
a  piece  of  wanton  mischief.  "The  ulterior  and  strategic 
advantages  of  the  occupation  of  Columbia  are  seen  now 
clearly  by  the  result,"  said  Sherman  under  oath.  "The 
burning  of  the  private  dwellings,  though  never  designed  by 
me,  was  a  trifling  matter  compared  with  the  manifold  results 
that  soon  followed.  Though  I  never  ordered  it  and  never 


308  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

wished  it,  I  have  never  shed  many  tears  over  the  event, 
because  I  believe  it  hastened  what  we  all  fought  for,  the  end 
of  the  war."  It  is  true  that  he  feared  previous  to  their  entry 
the  burning  of  Columbia  by  his  soldiers,  owing  to  their 
"deep-seated  feeling  of  hostility"  to  the  town,  but  no  gen 
eral  of  such  an  army  during  such  a  campaign  of  invasion 
would  have  refused  them  the  permission  to  occupy  the  capi 
tal  city  of  South  Carolina.  "I  could  have  had  them  stay 
in  the  ranks,"  he  declared,  "but  I  would  not  have  done  it 
under  the  circumstances  to  save  Columbia." 

Historical  and  legal  canons  for  weighing  evidence  are  not 
the  same.  It  is  a  satisfaction,  however,  when  after  the  in 
vestigation  of  any  case  they  lead  to  the  same  decision.  The 
members  of  the  British  and  American  mixed  commission 
(an  Englishman,  an  American,  and  the  Italian  Minister  at 
Washington),  having  to  adjudicate  upon  claims  for  "prop 
erty  alleged  to  have  been  destroyed  by  the  burning  of 
Columbia,  on  the  allegation  that  that  city  was  wantonly  fired 
by  the  army  of  General  Sherman,  either  under  his  orders 
or  with  his  consent  and  permission,"  disallowed  all  the 
claims,  "all  the  commissioners  agreeing."  While  they  were 
not  called  upon  to  deliver  a  formal  opinion  in  the  case, 
the  American  agent  was  advised  "that  the  commissioners 
were  unanimous  in  the  conclusion  that  the  conflagration 
which  destroyed  Columbia  was  not  to  be  ascribed  to  either 
the  intention  or  default  of  either  the  Federal  or  Confederate 
officers." 

To  recapitulate,  then,  what  I  think  I  have  established: 
Sherman's  account  and  that  of  the  Union  writers  who  follow 
him  cannot  be  accepted  as  history.  Neither  is  the  version 
of  Wade  Hampton  and  the  Southern  writers  worthy  of 
credence.  Let  me  now  give  what  I  am  convinced  is  the 
true  relation.  My  authorities  are  the  contemporary  ac- 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  309 

counts  of  six  Federal  officers,  whose  names  will  appear  when 
the  evidence  is  presented  in  detail;  the  report  of  Major 
Chambliss  of  the  Confederate  army;  "The  Sack  and  De 
struction  of  Columbia,"  a  series  of  articles  in  the  Columbia 
Phcenix,  written  by  William  Gilmore  Simms  and  printed  a 
little  over  a  month  after  the  event;  and  a  letter  written 
from  Charlotte,  February  22,  to  the  Richmond  Whig,  by 
F.  G.  de  F.,  who  remained  in  Columbia  until  the  day  before 
the  entrance  of  the  Union  troops. 

Two  days  before  the  entrance  of  the  Federal  troops, 
Columbia  was  placed  under  martial  law,  but  this  did  not 
prevent  some  riotous  conduct  after  nightfall  and  a  number 
of  highway  robberies;  stores  were  also  broken  into  and 
robbed.  There  was  great  disorder  and  confusion  in  the 
preparations  of  the  inhabitants  for  flight;  it  was  a  frantic 
attempt  to  get  themselves  and  their  portable  belongings 
away  before  the  enemy  should  enter  the  city.  "A  party 
of  Wheeler's  Cavalry/7  wrote  F.  G.  de  F.  to  the  Richmond 
Whig,  "  accompanied  by  their  officers  dashed  into  town 
[February  16],  tied  their  horses,  and  as  systematically  as  if 
they  had  been  bred  to  the  business,  proceeded  to  break  into 
the  stores  along  Main  Street  and  rob  them  of  their  contents." 
Early  in  the  morning  of  the  17th,  the  South  Carolina  rail 
road  depot  took  fire  through  the  reckless  operations  of  a 
band  of  greedy  plunderers,  who  while  engaged  in  robbing 
"the  stores  of  merchants  and  planters,  trunks  of  treasure, 
wares  and  goods  of  fugitives,"  sent  there  awaiting  shipment, 
fired,  by  the  careless  use  of  their  lights,  a  train  leading  to  a 
number  of  kegs  of  powder;  the  explosion  which  followed 
killed  many  of  the  thieves  and  set  fire  to  the  building. 
Major  Chambliss,  who  was  endeavoring  to  secure  the  means 
of  transportation  for  the  Confederate  ordnance  and  ord 
nance  stores,  wrote:  "The  straggling  cavalry  and  rabble 


310  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

were  stripping  the  warehouses  and  railroad  depots.     The 
city  was  in  the  wildest  t error. " 

When  the  Union  soldiers  of  Colonel  Stone's  brigade  en 
tered  the  city,  they  were  at  once  supplied  by  citizens  and 
negroes  with  large  quantities  of  intoxicating  liquor,  brought 
to  them  in  cups,  bottles,  demijohns,  and  buckets.  Many 
had  been  without  supper,  and  all  of  them  without  sleep  the 
night  before,  and  none  had  eaten  breakfast  that  morning. 
They  were  soon  drunk,  excited,  and  unmanageable.  The 
stragglers  and  "  bummers,"  who  had  increased  during  the 
march  through  South  Carolina,  were  now  attracted  by  the 
opportunity  for  plunder  and  swelled  the  crowd.  Union 
prisoners  of  war  had  escaped  from  their  places  of  confine 
ment  in  the  city  and  suburbs,  and  joining  their  comrades  were 
eager  to  avenge  their  real  or  fancied  injuries.  Convicts  in  the 
jail  had  in  some  manner  been  released.  The  pillage  of  shops 
and  houses  and  the  robbing  of  men  in  the  streets  began  soon 
after  the  entrance  of  the  army.  The  officers  tried  to  pre 
serve  discipline.  Colonel  Stone  ordered  all  the  liquor  to 
be  destroyed,  and  furnished  guards  for  the  private  property 
of  citizens  and  for  the  public  buildings;  but  the  extent  of 
the  disorder  and  plundering  during  the  day  was  probably 
not  appreciated  by  Sherman  and  those  high  in  command. 
Stone  was  hampered  in  his  efforts  to  preserve  order  by  the 
smallness  of  his  force  for  patrol  duty  and  by  the  drunkenness 
of  his  men.  In  fact,  the  condition  of  his  men  was  such  that 
at  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening  they  were  relieved  from  prov 
ost  duty,  and  a  brigade  of  the  same  division,  who  had  been 
encamped  outside  of  the  city  during  the  day,  took  their 
place.  But  the  mob  of  convicts,  escaped  Union  prisoners, 
stragglers  and  "  bummers/'  drunken  soldiers  and  negroes, 
Union  soldiers  who  were  eager  to  take  vengeance  on  South 
Carolina,  could  not  be  controlled.  The  sack  of  the  city 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  311 

went  on,  and  when  darkness  came,  the  torch  was  applied  to 
many  houses ;  the  high  wind  carried  the  flames  from  build 
ing  to  building,  until  the  best  part  of  Columbia  —  a  city  of 
eight  thousand  inhabitants  —  was  destroyed. 

Colonel  Stone  wrote,  two  days  afterwards:  " About  eight 
o' clock  the  city  was  fired  in  a  number  of  places  by  some 
of  our  escaped  prisoners  and  citizens."  "I  am  satisfied," 
said  General  W.  B.  Woods,  commander  of  the  brigade  that 
relieved  Stone,  in  his  report  of  March  26,  "by  statements 
made  to  me  by  respectable  citizens  of  the  town,  that  the 
fire  was  first  set  by  the  negro  inhabitants."  General  C.  R. 
Woods,  commander  of  the  first  division,  fifteenth  corps, 
wrote,  February  21 :  "The  town  was  fired  in  several  different 
places  by  the  villains  that  had  that  day  been  improperly 
freed  from  their  confinement  in  the  town  prison.  The  town 
itself  was  full  of  drunken  negroes  and  the  vilest  vagabond 
soldiers,  the  veriest  scum  of  the  entire  army  being  collected 
in  the  streets."  The  very  night  of  the  conflagration  he 
spoke  of  the  efforts  "to  arrest  the  countless  villains  of  every 
command  that  were  roaming  over  the  streets." 

General  Logan,  commander  of  the  fifteenth  corps,  said, 
in  his  report  of  March  31 :  "The  citizens  had  so  crazed  our 
men  with  liquor  that  it  was  almost  impossible  to  control 
them.  The  scenes  in  Columbia  that  night  were  terrible. 
Some  fiend  first  applied  the  torch,  and  the  wild  flames  leaped 
from  house  to  house  and  street  to  street,  until  the  lower 
and  business  part  of  the  city  was  wrapped  in  flames. 
Frightened  citizens  rushed  in  every  direction,  and  the  reel 
ing  incendiaries  dashed,  torch  in  hand,  from  street  to  street, 
spreading  dismay  wherever  they  went." 

"Some  escaped  prisoners,"  wrote  General  Howard,  com 
mander  of  the  right  wing,  April  1,  "convicts  from  the  peni 
tentiary  just  broken  open,  army  followers,  and  drunken 


312  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

soldiers  ran  through  house  after  house,  and  were  doubtless 
guilty  of  all  manner  of  villainies,  and  it  is  these  men  that  I 
presume  set  new  fires  farther  and  farther  to  the  windward 
in  the  northern  part  of  the  city.  Old  men,  women,  and 
children,  with  everything  they  could  get,  were  herded  to 
gether  in  the  streets.  At  some  places  we  found  officers  and 
kind-hearted  soldiers  protecting  families  from  the  insults 
and  roughness  of  the  careless.  Meanwhile  the  flames  made 
fearful  ravages,  and  magnificent  residences  and  churches 
were  consumed  in  a  very  few  minutes."  All  these  quo 
tations  are  from  Federal  officers  who  were  witnesses  of  the 
scene  and  who  wrote  their  accounts  shortly  after  the  event, 
without  collusion  or  dictation.  They  wrote  too  before  they 
knew  that  the  question,  Who  burned  Columbia?  would 
be  an  irritating  one  in  after  years.  These  accounts  are 
therefore  the  best  of  evidence.  Nor  does  the  acceptance 
of  any  one  of  them  imply  the  exclusion  of  the  others.  All 
may  be  believed,  leading  us  to  the  conclusion  that  all  the 
classes  named  had  a  hand  in  the  sack  and  destruction  of 
Columbia. 

When  the  fire  was  well  under  way,  Sherman  appeared  on 
the  scene,  but  gave  no  orders.  Nor  was  it  necessary,  for 
Generals  Howard,  Logan,  Woods,  and  others  were  laboring 
earnestly  to  prevent  the  spread  of  the  conflagration.  By 
their  efforts  and  by  the  change  and  subsidence  of  wind,  the 
fire  in  the  early  morning  of  February  18  was  stayed.  Colum 
bia,  wrote  General  Howard,  was  little  "except  a  black 
ened  surface  peopled  with  numerous  chimneys  and  an  oc 
casional  house  that  had  been  spared  as  if  by  a  miracle." 
Science,  history,  and  art  might  mourn  at  the  loss  they  sus 
tained  in  the  destruction  of  the  house  of  Dr.  Gibbes,  an 
antiquary  and  naturalist,  a  scientific  acquaintance,  if  not  a 
friend,  of  Agassiz.  His  large  library,  portfolios  of  fine  en- 


WHO  BURNED  COLUMBIA?  313 

gravings,  two  hundred  paintings,  a  remarkable  cabinet  of 
Southern  fossils,  a  collection  of  sharks'  teeth,  "  pronounced 
by  Agassiz  to  be  the  finest  in  the  world/'  relics  of  our  aborig 
ines  and  others  from  Mexico,  "his  collection  of  historical 
documents,  original  correspondence  of  the  Revolution,  es 
pecially  that  of  South  Carolina/'  were  all  burned. 

The  story  of  quelling  the  disorder  is  told  by  General 
Oliver:  "February  18,  at  4  A.M.,  the  Third  Brigade  was 
called  out  to  suppress  riot ;  did  so,  killing  2  men,  wounding 
30  and  arresting  370."  It  is  worthy  of  note  that,  despite 
the  reign  of  lawlessness  during  the  night,  very  few,  if  any, 
outrages  were  committed  on  women. 


A  NEW  ESTIMATE   OF  CROMWELL 

A  paper  read  before  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  at  the 
January  meeting  of  1898,  and  printed  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of 
June,  1898. 


A  NEW  ESTIMATE  OF  CROMWELL 

THE  most  notable  contributions  to  the  historical  litera 
ture  of  England  during  the  year  1897  are  two  volumes  by 
Samuel  R.  Gardiner:  the  Oxford  lectures,  "Cromwell's  Place 
in  History/7  published  in  the  spring;  and  the  second  volume 
of  " History  of  the  Commonwealth  and  Protectorate,"  which 
appeared  in  the  autumn.  These  present  what  is  probably 
a  new  view  of  Cromwell. 

If  one  loves  a  country  or  an  historic  epoch,  it  is  natural 
for  the  mind  to  seek  a  hero  to  represent  it.  We  are  fortu 
nate  in  having  Washington  and  Lincoln,  whose  characters 
and  whose  lives  sum  up  well  the  periods  in  which  they  were 
our  benefactors.  But  if  we  look  upon  our  history  as  being 
the  continuation  of  a  branch  of  that  of  England,  who  is  the 
political  hero  in  the  nation  from  which  we  sprang  who  rep 
resents  a  great  principle  or  idea  that  we  love  to  cherish? 
Hampden  might  answer  if  only  we  knew  more  about  him. 
It  occurs  to  me  that  Gray,  in  his  poem  which  is  read  and 
conned  from  boyhood  to  old  age,  has  done  more  than  any 
one  else  to  spread  abroad  the  fame  of  Hampden.  Included 
in  the  same  stanza  with  Milton  and  with  Cromwell,  he  seems 
to  the  mere  reader  of  the  poem  to  occupy  the  same  place  in 
history.  In  truth,  however,  as  Mr.  Gardiner  writes,  "it  is 
remarkable  how  little  can  be  discovered  about  Hampden. 
All  that  is  known  is  to  his  credit,  but  his  greatness  appears 
from  the  impression  he  created  upon  others  more  than  from 
the  circumstances  of  his  own  life  as  they  have  been  handed 
down  to  us." 

317 


318  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

The  minds  of  American  boys  educated  under  Puritan 
influences  before  and  during  the  war  of  secession  accordingly 
turned  to  Cromwell.  Had  our  Puritan  ancestors  remained 
at  home  till  the  civil  war  in  England,  they  would  have  fought 
under  the  great  Oliver,  and  it  is  natural  that  their  descend 
ants  should  venerate  him.  All  young  men  of  the  period 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  who  were  interested  in  history, 
read  Macaulay,  the  first  volume  of  whose  history  appeared 
in  1848,  and  they  found  in  Cromwell  a  hero  to  their  liking. 
Carlyle's  Cromwell  was  published  three  years  before,  and 
those  who  could  digest  stronger  food  found  the  great  man 
therein  portrayed  a  chosen  one  of  God  to  lead  his  people  in 
the  right  path.  Everybody  echoed  the  thought  of  Carlyle 
when  he  averred  that  ten  years  more  of  Oliver  Cromwell's 
life  would  have  given  another  history  to  all  the  centuries  of 
England. 

In  these  two  volumes  Gardiner  presents  a  different  con 
ception  of  Cromwell  from  that  of  Carlyle  and  Macaulay, 
and  in  greater  detail.  We  arrive  at  Gardiner's  notion 
by  degrees,  being  prepared  by  the  reversal  of  some  of 
our  pretty  well  established  opinions  about  the  Puritans. 
Macaulay's  epigrammatic  sentence  touching  their  attitude 
towards  amusements  undoubtedly  colored  the  opinions  of 
men  for  at  least  a  generation.  "The  Puritan  hated  bear- 
baiting,"  he  says,  "not  because  it  gave  pain  to  the  bear,  but 
because  it  gave  pleasure  to  the  spectators."  How  coolly 
Gardiner  disposes  of  this  well-turned  rhetorical  phrase: 
"The  order  for  the  complete  suppression  of  bear-baiting 
and  bull-baiting  at  Southwark  and  elsewhere  was  grounded, 
not,  as  has  been  often  repeated,  on  Puritan  aversion  to 
amusements  giving  'pleasure  to  the  spectators/  but  upon 
Puritan  disgust  at  the  immorality  which  these  exhibitions 
fostered."  Again  he  writes:  "Zealous  as  were  the  leaders 


A  NEW  ESTIMATE  OF  CROMWELL  319 

of  the  Commonwealth  in  the  suppression  of  vice,  they  dis 
played  but  little  of  that  sour  austerity  with  which  they  have 
frequently  been  credited.  On  his  way  to  Dunbar,  Crom 
well  laughed  heartily  at  the  sight  of  one  soldier  overturning 
a  full  cream  tub  and  slamming  it  down  on  the  head  of  an 
other,  whilst  on  his  return  from  Worcester  he  spent  a  day 
hawking  in  the  fields  near  Aylesbury.  '  Oliver/  we  hear, 
'loved  an  innocent  jest/  Music  and  song  were  cultivated 
in  his  family.  If  the  graver  Puritans  did  not  admit  what  has 
been  called  ' promiscuous  dancing7  into  their  households, 
they  made  no  attempt  to  prohibit  it  elsewhere."  In  the 
spring  of  1651  appeared  the  "English  Dancing  Master,"  con 
taining  rules  for  country  dances,  and  the  tunes  by  which 
they  were  to  be  accompanied. 

Macaulay's  description  of  Cromwell's  army  has  so  per 
vaded  our  literature  as  to  be  accepted  as  historic  truth; 
and  J.  R.  Green,  acute  as  he  was,  seems,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  to  have  been  affected  by  it,  which  is  not  a 
matter  of  wonderment,  indeed,  for  such  is  its  rhetorical 
force  that  it  leaves  an  impression  hard  to  be  obliterated. 
Macaulay  writes:  "That  which  chiefly  distinguished  the 
army  of  Cromwell  from  other  armies  was  the  austere  morality 
and  the  fear  of  God  which  pervaded  all  ranks.  It  is  acknowl 
edged  by  the  most  zealous  Royalists  that  in  that  singular 
camp  no  oath  was  heard,  no  drunkenness  or  gambling  was 
seen,  and  that  during  the  long  dominion  of  the  soldiery  the 
property  of  the  peaceable  citizen  and  the  honor  of  woman 
were  held  sacred.  If  outrages  were  committed,  they  were 
outrages  of  a  very  different  kind  from  those  of  which  a 
victorious  army  is  generally  guilty.  No  servant  girl  com 
plained  of  the  rough  gallantry  of  the  redcoats ;  not  an  ounce 
of  plate  was  taken  from  the  shops  of  the  goldsmiths;  but 
a  Pelagian  sermon,  or  a  window  on  which  the  Virgin  and 


320  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

Child  were  painted,  produced  in  the  Puritan  ranks  an  ex 
citement  which  it  required  the  utmost  exertions  of  the  offi 
cers  to  quell.  One  of  Cromwell's  chief  difficulties  was  to 
restrain  his  musketeers  and  dragoons  from  invading  by 
main  force  the  pulpits  of  ministers  whose  discourses,  to  use 
the  language  of  that  time,  were  not  savory." 

What  a  different  impression  we  get  from  Gardiner ! 
"Much  that  has  been  said  of  Cromwell's  army  has  no  evi 
dence  behind  it/'  he  declares.  "The  majority  of  the  sol 
diers  were  pressed  men,  selected  because  they  had  strong 
bodies,  and  not  because  of  their  religion.  The  remainder 
were  taken  out  of  the  armies  already  in  existence.  .  .  .  The 
distinctive  feature  of  the  army  was  its  officers.  All  existing 
commands  having  been  vacated,  men  of  a  distinctly  Puritan 
and  for  the  most  part  of  an  Independent  type  were  appointed 
to  their  places.  .  .  .  The  strictest  discipline  was  enforced, 
and  the  soldiers,  whether  Puritan  or  not,  were  thus  brought 
firmly  under  the  control  of  officers  bent  upon  the  one  object 
of  defeating  the  king." 

To  those  who  have  regarded  the  men  who  governed  Eng 
land,  from  the  time  the  Long  Parliament  became  supreme 
to  the  death  of  Cromwell,  as  saints  in  conduct  as  well  as  in 
name,  Mr.  Gardiner's  facts  about  the  members  of  the  rump 
of  the  Long  Parliament  will  be  an  awakening.  "It  was 
notorious,"  he  records,  "that  many  members  who  entered 
the  House  poor  were  now  rolling  in  wealth."  From  Gar 
diner's  references  and  quotations,  it  is  not  a  strained  in 
ference  that  in  subjection  to  lobbying,  in  log-rolling  and  cor 
ruption,  this  Parliament  would  hardly  be  surpassed  by  a 
corrupt  American  legislature.  As  to  personal  morality,  he 
by  implication  confirms  the  truth  of  Cromwell's  bitter  speech 
on  the  memorable  day  when  he  forced  the  dissolution  of 
the  Long  Parliament.  "Some  of  you,"  he  said,  "are  whore- 


A  NEW  ESTIMATE  OF  CROMWELL  321 

masters.  Others,"  he  continued,  pointing  to  one  and  an 
other  with  his  hands,  "are  drunkards,  and  some  corrupt 
and  unjust  men,  and  scandalous  to  the  profession  of  the 
gospel.  It  is  not  fit  that  you  should  sit  as  a  Parliament  any 
longer." 

While  I  am  well  aware  that  to  him,  who  makes  but  a  casual 
study  of  any  historic  period,  matters  will  appear  fresh  that 
to  the  master  of  it  are  well-worn  inferences  and  generaliza 
tions,  and  while  therefore  I  can  pretend  to  offer  only  a 
shallow  experience,  I  confess  that  on  the  points  to  which  I 
have  referred  I  received  new  light,  and  it  prepared  me  for 
the  overturning  of  the  view  of  Cromwell  which  I  had  derived 
from  the  Puritanical  instruction  of  my  early  days  and  from 
Macaulay. 

In  his  foreign  policy  Cromwell  was  irresolute,  vacillating 
and  tricky.  "A  study  of  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Protec 
torate,"  writes  Mr.  Gardiner,  "  re  veals  a  distracting  maze  of 
fluctuations.  Oliver  is  seen  alternately  courting  France 
and  Spain,  constant  only  in  inconstancy." 

Cromwell  lacked  constructive  statesmanship.  "The 
tragedy  of  his  career  lies  in  the  inevitable  result  that  his 
efforts  to  establish  religion  and  morality  melted  away  as 
the  morning  mist,  whilst  his  abiding  influence  was  built  upon 
the  vigor  with  which  he  promoted  the  material  aims  of  his 
countrymen."  In  another  place  Mr.  Gardiner  says :  "Crom 
well's  negative  work  lasted;  his  positive  work  vanished 
away.  His  constitutions  perished  with  him,  his  Protec 
torate  descended  from  the  proud  position  to  which  he  had 
raised  it,  his  peace  with  the  Dutch  Republic  was  followed 
by  two  wars  with  the  United  Provinces,  his  alliance  with 
the  French  monarchy  only  led  to  a  succession  of  wars  with 
France  lasting  into  the  nineteenth  century.  All  that  lasted 
was  the  support  given  by  him  to  maritime  enterprise,  and 


322  HISTORICAL  ESSAYS 

in  that  he  followed  the  tradition  of  the  governments  pre 
ceding  him." 

What  is  Cromwell's  place  in  history  ?  Thus  Mr.  Gardiner 
answers  the  question :  "He  stands  forth  as  the  typical  Eng 
lishman  of  the  modern  world.  ...  It  is  in  England  that 
his  fame  has  grown  up  since  the  publication  of  Carlyle's 
monumental  work,  and  it  is  as  an  Englishman  that  he  must 
be  judged.  .  .  .  With  Cromwell's  memory  it  has  fared  as 
with  ourselves.  Royalists  painted  him  as  a  devil.  Carlyle 
painted  him]  as  the  masterful  saint  who  suited  his  peculiar 
Valhalla.  It  is  time  for  us  to  regard  him  as  he  really  was, 
with  all  his  physical  and  moral  audacity,  with  all  his  ten 
derness  and  spiritual  yearnings,  in  the  world  of  action  what 
Shakespeare  was  in  the  world  of  thought,  the  greatest  be 
cause  the  most  typical  Englishman  of  all  time.  This,  in 
the  most  enduring  sense,  is  Cromwell's  place  in  history." 

The  idea  most  difficult  for  me  to  relinquish  is  that  of 
Cromwell  as  a  link  in  that  historic  chain  which  led  to  the 
Revolution  of  1688,  with  its  blessed  combination  of  liberty 
and  order.  I  have  loved  to  think,  as  Carlyle  expressed  it : 
"  'Their  works  follow  them,'  as  I  think  this  Oliver  Crom 
well's  works  have  done  and  are  still  doing !  We  have  had 
our  'Revolution  of  '88'  officially  called  'glorious,'  and  other 
Revolutions  not  yet  called  glorious ;  and  somewhat  has  been 
gained  for  poor  mankind.  Men's  ears  are  not  now  slit  off 
by  rash  Officiality.  Officiality  will  for  long  henceforth 
be  more  cautious  about  men's  ears.  The  tyrannous  star 
chambers,  branding  irons,  chimerical  kings  and  surplices  at 
Allhallowtide,  they  are  gone  or  with  immense  velocity  go 
ing.  Oliver's  works  do  follow  him!" 

In  these  two  volumes  of  Gardiner  it  is  not  from  what  is 
said,  but  from  what  is  omitted,  that  one  may  deduce  the 
author's  opinion  that  Cromwell's  career  as  Protector  con- 


A  NEW  ESTIMATE  OF  CROMWELL  323 

tributed  in  no  wise  to  the  Revolution  of  1688.  But  touching 
this  matter  he  has  thus  written  to  me:  "I  am  inclined  to 
question  your  view  that  Cromwell  paved  the  way  for  the 
Revolution  of  1688,  except  so  far  as  his  victories  and  the 
King's  execution  frightened  off  James  II.  Pym  and  Hamp- 
den  did  pave  the  way,  but  Cromwell's  work  took  other  lines. 
The  Instrument  of  Government  was  framed  on  quite  dif 
ferent  principles,  and  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  and  re 
formed  franchise  found  no  place  in  England  until  1832. 
It  was  not  Cromwell's  fault  that  it  was  so." 

If  I  relinquish  this  one  of  my  old  historic  notions,  I  feel 
that  I  must  do  it  for  the  reason  that  Lord  Auckland  agreed 
with  Macaulay  after  reading  the  first  volume  of  his  history. 
"I  had  also  hated  Cromwell  more  than  I  now  do,"  he  said; 
"  for  I  always  agree  with  Tom  Macaulay ;  and  it  saves  trouble 
to  agree  with  him  at  once,  because  he  is  sure  to  make  you 
do  so  at  last." 

I  asked  Professor  Edward  Channing  of  Harvard  College, 
who  teaches  English  History  of  the  Tudor  and  Stuart  periods, 
his  opinion  of  Gardiner.  "I  firmly  believe,"  he  told  me, 
"that  Mr.  Gardiner  is  the  greatest  English  historical  writer 
who  has  appeared  since  Gibbon.  He  has  the  instinct  of 
the  truth-seeker  as  no  other  English  student  I  know  of  has 
shown  it  since  the  end  of  the  last  century." 

General  J.  D.  Cox,  a  statesman  and  a  lawyer,  a  student  of 
history  and  of  law,  writes  to  me:  "In  reading  Gardiner,  I 
feel  that  I  am  sitting  at  the  feet  of  an  historical  chief  justice, 
a  sort  of  John  Marshall  in  his  genius  for  putting  the  final 
results  of  learning  in  the  garb  of  simple  common  sense." 


INDEX 


Adams,  C.  F.,  and  E.  G.  Bourne,  200. 

Adams,  J.  Q.,  as  President,  207,  209. 

Adams,  John,  as  President,  207. 

Adelaide,  Australia,  Froude's  descrip 
tion,  42. 

Alabama  claims,  arbitration,  218. 

Alexander  Severus,  homage  to  history,  4. 

Alison,  Sir  Archibald,  present-day  repu 
tation,  40. 

Allison,  W.  B.,  and  Hayes's  New  York 
Custom-house  appointments,  255;  and 
Silver  Bill  of  1878,  260. 

American  historians,  European  recog 
nition,  103. 

American  Historical  Association,  au 
thor's  addresses  before,  1  n.,  25,  81 ; 
interest  of  E.  G.  Bourne,  196. 

American  history,  qualities,  4,  20-23; 
newspapers  as  sources,  29-32,  85-95; 
and  early  English  history,  170.  See 
also  Elections,  History,  Presidential, 
United  States,  and  periods  by  name. 

American  Revolution,  Gibbon  on,  113. 

Amyot,  Jacques,  on  Alexander  Severus, 
4. 

Ancient  history,  monopoly  of  German 
historians,  75.  See  also  Ferrero, 
Gibbon,  Herodotus,  Tacitus,  Thu- 
cydides. 

Annexations,  Philippines,  195,  233,  234, 
286;  constitutional  control,  Louisi 
ana,  208,  211;  and  slavery,  Texas 
and  California,  212. 

Arbitrary  arrests  during  Civil  War,  214, 
215. 

Arbitration,  Alabama  claims,  218;  Cleve 
land  and  Venezuela,  225,  285;  Eng 
lish  draft  general  treaty,  226. 

Army,  Federal,  and  suppression  of  riot 
ing,  225,  253 ;  character  of  Cromwell's, 
319,  320. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  Americans,  21 ;  on 
Sainte-Beuve,  73;  on  criticism,  292. 

Arthur,  C.  A.,  as  President,  222;  re 
moval  by  Hayes,  255. 

Auckland,  Lord,  on  agreeing  with 
Macaulay,  323. 

Aulard,  F.  A.,  on  Taine,  83. 


Bagehot,  Walter,  on  presidential  office, 
204,  217. 

Baltimore,  railroad  riot  of  1877,  252. 

Balzac,  Honore"  de,  importance  to  his 
torians,  50,  73. 

Bancroft,  George,  use  of  foot-notes,  33 ; 
remuneration,  78;  T.  W.  Higginson 
on,  over-fondness  for  manuscript 
sources,  inaccuracy  of  quotations,  294. 

Beauregard,  P.  G.  T.,  and  burning  of 
Columbia,  304. 

Bemis,  George,  and  Lecky,  157. 

Bigelow,  John,  as  journalist,  90;  on 
importance  of  Godkin  to  The  Nation, 
275. 

Bismarck,  Fiirst  von,  on  power  of  press, 
89. 

Elaine,  J.  G.,  value  of  "Twenty  Years," 
33;  on  power  of  Congress  over  Presi 
dent,  216;  on  Hayes  and  Packard, 
248. 

Boer  War,  Godkin  on,  290. 

Boston,  H.  G.  Wells's  criticism  con 
sidered,  138. 

Boston  Athenaeum,  editions  of  Gibbon 
in,  138. 

Bourne,  E.  G.,  and  preparation  of  au 
thor's  history,  as  critic,  85,  86,  197- 
199;  essay  on,  191-200;  malady,  191, 
192;  physique,  191 ;  death,  192;  educa 
tion,  192;  works,  193-195;  professor 
ships,  193;  on  Marcus  Whitman,  193; 
on  Columbus,  194,  195;  on  Philip 
pines  and  Monroe  Doctrine,  195;  un 
finished  biography  of  Motley,  196; 
critical  notices,  196,  197;  thorough 
ness,  196;  interest  in  American  His 
torical  Association,  196;  desultory 
reading,  199;  and  editorship  of  pub 
lications  of  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  199. 

Bowies,  Samuel,  as  journalist,  90. 

Brown,  John,  Pottawatomie  Massacre 
and  election  of  1856,  88. 

Browning,  Oscar,  on  Carlyle,  41. 

Brunetiere,  Ferdinand,  on  French  lit 
erary  masters,  73. 

Bryan,  W.  J.,  campaign  of  1896, 228, 286. 


326 


INDEX 


Bryant,  W.  C.,  as  journalist,  90;  and 
Greeley,  269. 

Bryce,  James,  importance  of  "Holy 
Roman  Empire,"  60,  61 ;  on  Federal 
Constitution,  203;  on  presidential 
office,  204,  205,  235,  240;  on  Godkin 
and  The  Nation,  276,  286,  295;  on 
Herbert  Spencer,  293. 

Buchanan,  James,  as  President,  213. 

Buckle,  H.  T.,  enthusiasm,  38;  influence 
on  Lecky,  154. 

Burt,  S.  W.,  appointment  by  Hayes,  255. 

Bury,  J.  B.,  edition  of  Gibbon,  61 ;  on 
Gibbon,  109,  110. 

Butler,  Joseph,  influence  on  Lecky,  154. 

Cabinet,  Grant's,  186,  278;  character  of 
Jackson's,  210;  Pierce  and  Buchanan 
controlled  by,  213;  Hayes's,  221, 
246-248,  262. 

Cabot,  Charles,  gift  to  Boston  Athe 
naeum,  138. 

Calhoun,  J.  C.,  and  annexation  of  Texas, 
211. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  as  historian,  38,  41; 
and  mathematics,  56,  57 ;  importance 
in  training  of  historians,  "French 
Revolution"  and  "Frederick,"  62- 
64;  biography,  64;  self-education, 
65;  lack  of  practical  experience,  66; 
on  historical  method,  77;  on  Gibbon, 
115;  on  Cromwell,  inaccuracy  of 
quotations,  144,  318,  321;  on  pe 
cuniary  rewards  of  literary  men,  146; 
Gladstone  on,  155. 

Chamberlain,  D.  H.,  contested  election, 
248. 

Chamberlain,  Joseph,  on  newspapers 
and  public  opinion,  31 ;  Godkin  on, 
290. 

Chambliss,  N.  R.,  on  burning  of  Colum 
bia,  305,  309. 

Channing,  Edward,  on  Gardiner,  323. 

Charleston,  secession  movement,  91 ; 
feeling  of  Union  army  towards,  306. 

Charleston  Courier,  and  secession  move 
ment,  92. 

Charleston  Mercury,  and  secession  move 
ment,  92. 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  on  Thucydides,  15. 

Choate,  Rufus,  and  Whig  nominations 
in  1852,  87. 

Christianity,  Gibbon  on  early  church, 
131-133. 

Cicero,  homage  to  history,  4;  impor 
tance  to  historians,  51 ;  Gibbon  on, 
120;  contradictions,  290. 


Civil  service,  J.  D.  Cox  and  reform,  186; 
spoils  system,  209,  211;  need  of  spe 
cial  training  ignored,  210;  reform 
under  Hayes,  221,  254-257;  Reform 
Bill,  222;  Cleveland  and  reform,  223, 
224;  demand  on  President's  time 
of  appointments,  number  of  presiden 
tial  offices,  236;  Godkin  and  reform, 
280. 

Civil  War,  newspapers  as  historical 
source  on,  32,  92-94 ;  value  of  Official 
Records,  92;  attitude  of  Lecky,  157; 
presidential  office  during,  arbitrary 
actions,  213-216;  Godkin  as  corre 
spondent  during,  273;  burning  of 
Columbia,  301-313. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  as  President,  223- 
226;  and  civil  service  reform,  223; 
soundness  on  finances,  225 ;  and  rail 
road  riots,  225;  foreign  policy,  225; 
and  disorganization  of  Democracy, 
226;  and  public  opinion,  231;  as  a 
prime  minister,  241,  263;  and  Hayes, 
attends  funeral  of  Hayes,  263;  at 
titude  of  Godkin,  285. 

Columbia,  S.  C.,  burning  of,  301-313; 
Sherman's  and  Hampton's  accounts 
discredited,  301-308;  feeling  of  Union 
army  towards,  306-308;  Sherman's 
orders  on  occupation,  307;  verdict  of 
mixed  commission  on,  308;  mob 
responsibility,  308-313. 

Columbia  University,  lecture  by  author 
at,  47. 

Commonwealth  of  England.  See  Crom 
well. 

Comte,  Auguste,  influence,  73. 

Conciseness  in  history,  11,  14,  16,  20,  36. 

Congress,  control  of  Senate  over  Pierce 
and  Buchanan,  213;  power  during 
Johnson's  administration,  216;  over 
shadows  President,  power  of  Speaker 
of  House,  227;  McKinley's  control 
over,  234;  contact  with  President, 
237;  and  Hayes,  249,  256,  257,  261. 

Conkling,  Roscoe,  contest  with  Hayes 
over  New  York  Custom-house,  255. 

Constitution.  See  Federal  Constitu 
tion. 

Copyright,  The  Nation  and  international, 
282. 

Cornell,  A.  B.,  removal  by  Hayes,  255. 

Corruption,  Gibbon  on,  127. 

Cox,  J.  D.,  on  Gardiner,  44,  323;  essay 
on,  185-188;  varied  activities,  185; 
as  general,  185;  as  governor,  185; 
and  negro  suffrage,  186;  as  cabinet 


INDEX 


327 


Cox,  J.  D.  —  Continued 

officer,  186;  and  civil  service  reform, 
186;  in  Congress,  186;  and  Spanish 
Mission,  186;  private  positions,  187; 
works,  as  military  historian,  187; 
and  Grant,  187;  contributions  to 
The  Nation,  187;  as  reader,  187; 
character,  188;  on  Godkin,  295;  on 
burning  of  Columbia,  303. 

Crimean  War,  Godkin  on,  273. 

Cromer,  Lord,  on  power  of  press,  89,  96. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  Carlyle's  biography, 
144,  150;  Gardiner's  influence  on 
fame,  150;  Gardiner's  estimate,  317- 
323;  character,  319;  character  of 
army,  319,  320;  foreign  policy,  321; 
lack  of  constructive  statesmanship, 
321 ;  as  typical  Englishman,  322 ;  and 
Revolution  of  1688,  322,  323. 

Curchod,  Suzanne,  and  Gibbon,  136. 

Curtis,  G.  W.,  on  The  Nation,  270. 

Curtius,  Ernst,  as  historian,  34,  43. 

Dana,  C.  A.,  as  journalist,  historical 
value  of  articles,  31,  90. 

Darwin,  C.  R.,  biography,  59;  truthful 
ness,  145. 

Dates  in  historical  work,  importance  of 
newspapers,  87. 

Democratic  party,  and  Cleveland's  ad 
ministration,  223,  226. 

Demosthenes,  and  Thucydides,  15. 

Desultory  reading  in  training  of  his 
torian,  64,  65,  199. 

Devens,  Charles,  in  Hayes's  cabinet,  247. 

Deyverdun,  Georges,  collaboration  with 
Gibbon,  124. 

Dicey,  A.  V.,  as  contributor  to  The 
Nation,  282,  294. 

Dictionaries,  importance  of  quotations 
in,  55. 

Dingley  Tariff  Act,  229. 

Duff,  Sir  M.  E.  Grant,  on  Herodotus,  5. 

Eckermann,  J.  P.,  "Conversations  with 
Goethe,"  70-72. 

Elections,  1852,  Whig  nominations, 
Scott's  stumping  tour,  86,  87;  1856, 
Kansas  as  issue,  88;  1876,  contro 
versy,  and  flexibility  of  Constitution, 
203,  219,  245;  1896,  bimetallism  as 
issue,  228;  attitude  of  Godkin,  286. 

Elizabeth,  Froude  and  Gardiner  on,  149  ; 
and  Anglo-Saxon  development,  172. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  on  originality,  28;  on 
mathematics,  57;  on  philanthropists, 
181 ;  on  The  Nation,  270. 


England,  Macaulay's  history,  37,  41,  62; 
Gardiner's  history,  143-150;  Lecky's 
history,  154,  155;  Walpole's  history, 
161,  163,  164;  conditions  in  1815,  161; 
Green's  history,  171,  172;  Alabama 
claims  arbitration,  217;  Venezuela- 
Guiana  boundary,  225,  285 ;  draft  gen 
eral  arbitration  treaty,  226;  atti 
tude  of  Godkin,  272,  284,  290;  Crom 
well  and  the  Commonwealth,  317-323. 

Evarts,  W.  M.,  Secretary  of  State,  abil 
ity,  246;  social  character,  262;  pes 
simism,  288. 

Evening  Post,  acquires  The  Nation,  God- 
kin  as  editor,  274. 

Evolution,  and  history,  4,  36. 

Executive.  See  Civil  service,  Presiden 
tial  office. 

Federal  Constitution,  English  model, 
203;  rigidity  and  flexibility,  203,  216; 
as  political  tradition,  208.  See  also 
Presidential  office. 

Ferrero,  Guglielmo,  as  historian,  75;  on 
Cicero's  contradictions,  290. 

Fessenden,  W.  P.,  and  Whig  nomina 
tions  in  1852,  87. 

Fillmore,  Martin,  as  President,  212. 

Finances,  greenback  craze,  219,  246,  281 ; 
silver  agitation  of  1878,  221,  259,  260; 
Silver  Act  of  1890,  224,  227;  Cleve 
land's  soundness,  225;  attitude  of 
Republican  party  on  money,  227,  257 ; 
issue  in  campaign  of  1896,  228,  286; 
gold  standard,  231 ;  depression  (1877- 
1878),  251,  258;  Hayes's  administra 
tion,  257-260;  Sherman's  refunding, 
257;  resumption  of  specie  payments, 
258,  259 ;  The  Nation  and  sound,  280- 
282. 

Fine  arts,  and  training  of  historian,  59. 

Firth,  C.  H.,  to  continue  Gardiner's 
history,  148. 

Fish,  Hamilton,  and  arbitration  of  Ala 
bama  claims,  218. 

Fiske,  John,  anecdote  of  the  Websters, 
54;  as  popular  scientist,  58;  power 
of  concentration,  69. 

Footnotes,  use  in  histories,  33. 

Ford,  P.  L.,  on  writing  criticisms  for 
The  Nation,  292. 

Foreign  relations,  under  Washington, 
206;  under  Tyler  and  Polk,  211;  un 
der  Grant,  218;  under  Cleveland,  225, 
285;  under  McKinley,  231-234.  See 
also  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Fourth  estate,  newspaper  as,  96. 


328 


INDEX 


Franklin,  battle  of,  J.  D.  Cox  in,  185. 

Frederick  the  Great,  Carlyle's  biography, 
63. 

Frederick  III  of  Germany,  "wise  em 
peror,"  127. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  on  Gibbon,  109. 

French,  importance  to  historians,  49-51 ; 
Gibbon's  knowledge,  119,  123. 

French  Revolution,  Carlyle's  history,  62  ; 
Gibbon  and,  113. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  on  Ulysses,  2 ;  inaccuracy, 
41;  biography  of  Carlyle,  64;  on 
Elizabeth,  143,  149. 

Gardiner,  S.  R.,  truthfulness,  7,  145; 
as  historical  model,  42,  45;  lack  of 
practical  experience,  66,  148;  method, 
76;  essay  on,  143-150;  death,  143; 
thoroughness  of  research,  143,  157; 
as  linguist,  143;  manuscript  material, 
143;  on  Carlyle's  "Cromwell,"  144; 
writings  and  editorial  work,  144; 
birth,  145;  conception  of  great  work, 
145;  Irvingite,  146;  struggles  and 
success,  146,  147;  as  teacher,  147; 
honors,  147;  day's  routine,  manner  of 
composition,  147;  style,  148;  sound 
ness  and  influence  of  historical  esti 
mates,  149-150;  estimate  of  Crom 
well,  150,  317-323;  on  J.  R.  Green, 
172;  on  Hampden,  317;  on  character 
of  Puritans,  318;  on  Cromwell's  army, 
320;  on  character  of  Rump,  320; 
rank  as  historian,  323. 

Gardner,  Percy,  on  Herodotus,  5,  40. 

Garfield,  J.  A.,  desire  for  fame,  3;  as 
President,  222;  as  speaker,  241. 

Garrison,  W  P.,  as  literary  editor  of  The 
Nation,  291-295. 

Generalizations,  need  of  care,  32,  178. 

German,  importance  to  historians,  52. 

German  historians,  and  ancient  history, 
75. 

Gibbes,  R.  W.,  destruction  of  collections, 
312. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  rank  and  character 
istics  as  historian,  5,  10,  109,  114;  on 
Tacitus,  10,  116;  style,  53,  133;  and 
mathematics,  56;  importance  in 
training  of  historian,  60;  autobiog 
raphies,  64,  134;  essay  on,  107-140; 
conception  of  history,  107;  comple 
tion  of  it,  108;  progress  and  success 
of  work,  108 ;  and  classic  masters,  1 10  ; 
range  of  work,  110;  its  endurance, 
110;  as  possible  writer  of  contem 
porary  history,  111,  112;  political 


Gibbon,  Edward  —  Continued 

career,  111;  conservatism,  112;  and 
American  Revolution,  113;  historical 
subjects  considered  by,  115;  and 
earlier  period  of  Roman  Empire,  116; 
intellectual  training,  117-123;  love 
of  reading,  118;  at  Oxford,  118;  con 
version  and  reconversion,  118,  121; 
at  Lausanne,  119;  self-training,  119, 
122;  linguistic  knowledge,  119,  120, 
122,  123;  influence  of  Pascal,  119; 
and  Voltaire,  121;  on  Robertson,  122; 
"Essay  on  Study  of  Literature,"  123; 
service  in  militia,  its  influence,  123; 
manuscript  history  of  Switzerland, 
124;  begins  work  on  history,  124; 
fame  rests  on  it,  125;  Milman,  Guizot, 
and  Mommsen  on  it,  125;  quotations 
from,  126-128;  definitions  of  history, 
126;  on  religion  under  Pagan  empire, 
126;  on  happiest  period  of  mankind, 
127;  on  corruption,  127;  on  sea-power, 
127;  subjection  to  criticism,  128; 
correctness,  128;  truthfulness,  129, 
130;  use  of  conjecture,  129;  precision 
and  accuracy,  129;  treatment  of 
early  Christian  church,  131-133;  on 
Julian  the  Apostate,  132;  on  Theo 
dora,  licentious  passages,  133;  com 
position  of  history,  134 ;  love  of  books 
and  wine,  135;  gout,  135;  and  women, 
love  affair,  136-138;  history  in  quarto 
edition,  138;  human  importance  of 
work,  139;  satisfaction  with  career, 
139. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  on  Lecky,  Carlyle, 
and  Macaulay,  155. 

Gloucester,  William  Henry,  Duke  of, 
on  Gibbon's  history,  138. 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  power  as  journalist,  95; 
essay  on,  267-297;  rank  as  journalist, 
267;  on  Greeley,  267,  268;  illustra 
tion  of  influence,  268;  character,  269; 
indirect  influence,  character  of  clien 
tele,  270,  271;  authorship  of  articles 
in  The  Nation,  271;  Essays,  272; 
early  life,  272;  early  optimism  and 
later  pessimism  concerning  America, 
272,  284-290,  296;  as  war  corre 
spondent,  272 ;  in  America,  journey  in 
South,  273;  correspondent  of  London 
News,  273 ;  foundation  of  The  Nation, 
273;  editor  of  Evening  Post,  274; 
retirement,  274;  lectures,  honors, 
274;  and  offer  of  professorship,  274- 
276;  nervous  strain,  275;  accused 
of  censorious  criticism,  276;  of  un- 


INDEX 


329 


Godkin,  E.  L.  —  Continued 

fortunate  influence  on  intellectual 
youth,  277 ;  influence  on  author,  278- 
282,  292-294 ;  influence  in  West,  279 ; 
disinterestedness,  280 ;  and  civil  ser 
vice  reform,  280;  and  sound  finances, 
280-282 ;  and  tariff,  282 ;  and  foreign 
affairs,  282 ;  other  phases  of  influence, 
282 ;  never  retracted  personal  charges, 
282;  implacability,  ignores  death  of 
F.  A.  Walker,  282-284;  and  Cleve 
land,  285;  and  election  of  1896,  286; 
and  Spanish  War  and  Philippines,  286 ; 
moral  censor,  289;  criticism  of  Eng 
land,  290;  disappointment  in  democ 
racy,  291;  literary  criticism  in  The 
Nation,  291-295;  on  W.  P.  Garrison, 
291;  influence  of  foreign  birth,  295; 
fame,  295;  lectureship  as  memorial 
to,  296;  farewell  words,  on  general 
progress  and  political  decline,  296, 
297. 

Goethe,  J.  W.  von,  on  Moliere,  50;  on 
linguistic  ability,  52;  "Faust"  and 
study  of  human  character,  68;  "Con 
versations,"  70,  72;  wide  outlook, 
71. 

Gold  Standard  Act,  231. 

Gordon,  C.  G.,  newspapers  and  Soudan 
expedition,  89. 

Gout,  Gibbon  on,  135. 

Grant,  U.  S.,  first  cabinet,  186,  278; 
and  Cox,  187;  as  President,  moral 
tone  of  administration,  217-219,  262; 
on  criticism,  218,  239. 

Greek,  importance  to  historians,  51, 
Gibbon's  knowledge,  120,  122,  123. 

Greek  history.  See  Herodotus,  Thu- 
cydides. 

Greeley,  Horace,  influence  as  journalist, 
historical  value  of  articles,  31,  90, 
267;  partisanship,  91;  character, 
268-270. 

Green,  J.  R.,  as  historian,  42;  ad 
dress  on,  171-173;  popularity  in 
America,  171;  on  Elizabeth,  172;  ac 
curacy,  172;  character,  172;  on  Crom 
well's  army,  319. 

Greenbacks.     See  Finances. 

Grote,  George,  on  Thucydides,  7;  on 
references,  33;  business  training,  78. 

Guizot,  F.  P.  G.,  on  Gibbon's  history, 
125. 

Hadrian,  "traveling  emperor,"  127. 
Halleck,  H.  W.,  attitude  to  wards  Charles 
ton,  306. 


Hamilton,  Alexander,  on  presidential 
office,  204,  233,  240;  as  adviser  of 
Washington,  207. 

Hampden,  John,  as  possible  Anglo- 
Saxon  hero,  317;  and  Revolution  of 
1688,  323. 

Hampton,  Wade,  and  burning  of  Colum 
bia,  302-305,  308. 

Harrison,  Benjamin,  as  President,  226; 
as  speaker,  241. 

Harrison,  Frederic,  on  Gibbon,  10;  on 
Spencer  Walpole,  165. 

Harrison,  W.  H.,  as  President,  211. 

Hart,  A.  B.,  on  Herodotus,  6. 

Harvard  University,  addresses  of  author 
at,  47,  101-103,  105,  243,  265;  striving 
after  exact  knowledge,  101 ;  honorary 
degree  for  Hayes,  251;  offers  profes 
sorship  to  Godkin,  274,  275;  Godkin 
Lectureship,  296. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  conciseness,  36. 

Hay,  John,  anecdote  of  Grant,  218;  as 
Secretary  of  State,  234;  on  Hayes 
and  finances,  260. 

Hayes,  Lucy  W.,  as  wife  of  President, 
221,  262. 

Hayes,  R.  B.,  election  controversy,  203, 
219,  245;  administration,  219-222, 
245-264 ;  as  a  prime  minister,  241,  263  ; 
righteousness  of  acceptance  of  elec 
tion,  245;  difficulty  of  situation,  245, 
261;  as  governor,  246;  letter  of  ac 
ceptance,  246;  inaugural,  246;  cab 
inet,  246-248,  262;  withdrawal  of 
troops  from  South,  248,  249;  and 
Congress,  249,  256,  257,  261;  civil 
service  reforms,  contest  with  Conkling, 
250,  254-257;  honorary  degree  from 
Harvard,  251 ;  and  railroad  riots,  253, 
254;  and  finances,  independent  think 
ing,  257-260;  vetoes  of  repeal  of 
Federal  election  laws,  260;  extra  ses 
sions  of  Congress,  261 ;  serenity,  261 ; 
popular  support,  261 ;  and  election 
of  1880,  261;  moral  tone  of  adminis 
tration,  262 ;  and  Cleveland,  263. 

Herodotus,  on  purpose  of  history,  2; 
rank  as  historian,  5,  34,  40;  as  con 
temporary  historian,  17. 

Higginson,  T.  W.,  on  Bancroft,  294. 

Hildreth,  Richard,  historical  value  of 
newspaper  articles,  31. 

Hill,  G.  B.,  on  Gibbon's  history  and 
autobiography,  125. 

Historian,  training,  49-79;  necessary 
linguistic  knowledge,  49-52;  acquisi 
tion  of  style,  52-55;  knowledge  of 


330 


INDEX 


Historian  —  Continued 

mathematics,  55-57;  of  other  sciences, 
57-59;  of  fine  arts,  59;  general  his 
torical  reading,  60-70;  mastery  of 
Gibbon  and  Bryce,  60;  of  Tacitus 
and  Thucydides,  61;  of  other  his 
torians,  62-64 ;  knowledge  of  lives  of 
historians,  64;  desultory  reading, 
64-65;  study  of  human  character, 
experimental  and  through  books, 
66-68;  thorough  reading  of  char 
acteristic  works,  68;  speed  and 
retention  of  reading,  69;  importance 
of  "Conversations  of  Goethe,"  70-72; 
of  Sainte-Beuve's  criticisms,  72; 
choice  of  subject,  74;  method, 
originality,  75;  note-making,  76;  Car- 
lyle  on  method,  77;  remuneration, 
77;  and  teaching  of  history,  78; 
and  business  training,  78.  See  also 
next  two  titles. 

Historians,  Shakespeare  and  Homer  as, 
1,2,7;  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  present-day,  4,  20;  best,  5,  11; 
Herodotus,  5,  17,  34,  40;  Thucydides, 
6-8,  11-15,  17-19,  35,  61,  110,  111, 
128;  Tacitus,  8-10,  15,  17-20,  61, 
110,  111,  116,  128;  Gibbon,  10,  60, 
107-140;  conciseness,  11,  14,  16,  20, 
36;  source  material,  12-16,  20,  22; 
contemporaneousness,  17-20;  neces 
sary  qualities,  20;  monographs,  22; 
patriotism,  22 ;  necessity  and  kinds  of 
originality,  27-29,  75;  use  of  news 
papers,  29-32,  83-97;  generaliza 
tions,  32,  178;  use  of  footnotes,  33; 
fresh  combination  of  well-known  facts, 
34;  present-day  models,  34-43;  re 
flection,  37;  enthusiasm,  38;  Macau- 
lay,  36-38,  41,  62;  Carlyle,  38,  41,  62; 
old  and  new  schools,  ethical  judg 
ments,  human  interest,  39,  43-45; 
Hume,  Robertson,  Alison,  40 ;  Froude, 
41;  Green,  42,  171-173;  Stubbs,  42, 
157;  Gardiner,  42,  143-150,  157,  323; 
and  popularity,  44 ;  growth  of  candor, 
45;  Bryce,  60,  61;  use  of  manuscript 
material,  85,  294;  gospel  of  exact 
knowledge,  101;  Lecky,  153-158; 
Spencer  Walpole,  161-167;  E.  L. 
Pierce,  177-181;  J.  D.  Cox,  187; 
E.  G.  Bourne,  191-200;  Bancroft, 
294.  See  also  titles  above  and 
below. 

History,  intellectual  rank,  1 ;  and  poetry, 
1,  2;  and  physical  sciences,  2;  defini 
tions,  2,  6,  43,  126;  homage  of  politi- 


History  —  Continued 

cians,  3;  and  evolution,  4,  36;  news 
papers  as  source,  29-32,  83-97 ;  value 
of  manuscript  sources,  85,  294.  See 
also  two  titles  above. 

Hoar,  E.  R.,  in  Grant's  cabinet,  186, 
278;  and  The  Nation,  278. 

Holm,  Adolf,  on  Thucydides,  39;  on 
scientific  history,  43;  as  historian, 
75. 

Hoist,  H.  E.  von,  use  of  newspapers,  29, 
85;  on  westward  expansion  and  slav 
ery,  212. 

Home  rule,  Lecky's  attitude,  156. 

Homer,  as  historian,  1,  2,  22;  and  study 
of  human  character,  67. 

House  of  Representatives.    See  Congress. 

Howard,  O.  O.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 
302,  307,  311,  312. 

Howells,  W.  D.,  pessimism,  288. 

Hugo,  Victor,  influence,  73. 

Hume,  David,  present-day  reputation, 
40,  111;  on  Gibbon's  history  of  Swit 
zerland,  124. 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  as  popular  scientist,  58; 
biography,  59;  on  things  useful,  102; 
on  college  training,  102. 

Income  tax  decision,  Lecky  on,  157. 
Ireland,  Lecky's  history,  155. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  as  President,  209-211 ; 
as  leader  of  democracy,  209;  and 
spoils  system,  209;  and  training  for 
administrative  work,  210;  and  nulli 
fication,  210. 

James,  Henry,  on  Sainte-Beuve,  73. 

James,  T.  L.,  as  postmaster  of  New  York, 
254. 

James,  William,  on  Godkin,  270. 

Jay  Treaty,  as  precedent  for  treaty- 
making  power,  206. 

Jebb,  Sir  R.  C.,  on  Herodotus,  6,  17;  on 
Tacitus,  10;  on  Thucydides,  17. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  as  President,  207, 
208;  Louisiana  Purchase,  208. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  as  President,  216. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  on  American  Revolu 
tion,  113. 

Johnston,  J.  E.,  Hayes  desires  to  offer 
cabinet  position  to,  247. 

Journalists,  Godkin,  267-297.  See  also 
Newspapers. 

Jowett,  Benjamin,  on  Thucydides,  6. 

Julian  the  Apostate,  Gibbon's  treat 
ment,  132. 


INDEX 


331 


Kansas,  and  election  of  1856,  88. 

Kent,  James,  on  danger  in  presidential 

contests,  219. 

Key,  D.  M.,  in  Hayes's  cabinet,  247. 
Kinglake,    A.  W.,    on    power  of   press, 


Laboulaye,  Edouard,  on  Federal  Consti 
tution,  204. 

Langlois,  C.  V.,  on  Froude,  41;  on 
ethical  judgments,  43;  on  note-mak 
ing,  76. 

Latin,  importance  to  historians,  49, 
51,  54;  Gibbon's  knowledge,  120, 
123. 

Laud,  William,  Macaulay  and  Gardiner 
on,  149. 

Lausanne,  Gibbon  at,  108,  113,  119,  121; 
Voltaire's  theatre,  121. 

Lea,  H.  C.,  business  training,  79;  as 
scientific  historian,  103. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  and  Christianity,  131 ; 
essay  on,  153-158;  precocity,  153; 
value  of  "Morals,"  153;  intellectual 
training,  153;  as  philosophic  historian, 
154;  "England,"  154,  155;  on  French 
Revolution,  155 ;  on  Irish  history,  155 ; 
in  politics,  156;  popularity  of  history, 
156;  social  traits,  156;  interest  in 
America,  157;  historic  divination, 
158;  "Democracy  and  Liberty,"  158. 

Lewis,  Sir  George  Cornewall,  on  power 
of  press,  96. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  as  President,  213- 
216;  theory  and  action  of  war  power, 
213;  as  a  precedent,  214;  popular 
support,  215;  and  public  opinion, 
231 ;  as  a  prime  minister,  241. 

Linguistic  ability,  importance  to  his 
torians,  49-52;  Gibbon's,  133;  Gar 
diner's,  143. 

Literary  criticism  in  The  Nation,  291- 
295. 

Literary  style,  acquisition  by  historian, 
52-55;  Macaulay's,  55;  Gibbon's, 
133;  Gardiner's,  148;  Spencer  Wai- 
pole's,  165. 

Lodge,  H.  C.,  in  the  House,  227. 

Logan,  J.  A.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 
303,  311,  312. 

London  Daily  News,  Godkin  as  American 
correspondent,  273. 

Long  Parliament,  character  of  rump, 
320. 

Louisiana,  purchase  as  precedent,  208; 
overthrow  of  carpet-bag  government, 
248,  249. 


Lowell,  J.  R.,  on  present-day  life,  21; 
on  Carlyle,  39;  on  college  training, 
102;  on  Darwin,  145;  on  Grant's 
cabinet,  186;  on  The  Nation,  268,  271, 
278;  on  importance  of  Godkin  to  it, 
275. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  on  Shakespeare  as  his 
torian,  2 ;  on  Herodotus,  5 ;  prolixity, 
11,  16,  36;  on  Thucydides,  19,  61; 
lack  of  reflection  and  digestion,  37; 
enthusiasm,  38;  as  partisan,  41; 
and  popularity,  44;  on  Greek  and 
Latin,  51 ;  style,  55 ;  on  mathematics, 
56;  importance  in  training  of  his 
torian,  62;  biography,  64;  as  reader, 
69;  on  Gibbon,  115;  on  Wentworth 
and  Laud,  149;  Gladstone  on,  155; 
on  Cromwell,  318;  on  character  of 
Puritans,  318;  on  Cromwell's  army, 
319;  Auckland  on  agreeing  with,  323. 

McCrary,  G.  W.,  in  Haj^es's  cabinet,  247. 

McKim,  J.  M.,  and  foundation  of  The 
Nation,  273,  274. 

McKinley,  William,  as  leader  of  House, 
227;  tariff  bill,  227;  as  President, 
229-234;  change  in  tariff  views,  229- 
231;  and  gold  standard,  231;  and 
public  opinion,  Spanish  War  and 
Philippines,  231-234;  diplomacy,  234; 
influence  on  Congress,  234 ;  as  speaker, 
241 ;  attitude  of  Godkin,  286. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  on  irreligion  of 
Gibbon's  time,  132. 

Madison,  James,  as  President,  207. 

Mahaffy,  J.  P.,  on  Herodotus,  5;  on 
Thucydides,  8. 

Mahan,  A.  T.,  anticipation  of  theory, 
127. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  on  Federal  Constitu 
tion,  203,  206. 

Manuscript  sources,  value,  85,  91,  294; 
Gardiner's  use,  143,  144. 

Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  papers 
by  author  before,  141,  151,  159,  175, 
183,  189,  315;  recognition  of  Gardi 
ner,  147;  of  Lecky,  156;  interest  of 
E.  L.  Pierce  in,  181;  E.  G.  Bourne 
and  editorship  of  publications,  199. 

Mathematics,  and  training  of  historian, 
55-57. 

Matthews,  William,  on  The  Nation,  278, 
279. 

Merritt,  E.  A.,  appointment  by  Hayes, 
255. 

Mexican  War,  aggression,  212;  and 
slavery,  212. 


332 


INDEX 


Mill,  J.  S.,  and  mathematics,  56;  prod 
igy,  56. 

Milligan  case,  and  arbitrary  government, 
215. 

Milman,  H.  H.,  on  Gibbon's  history,  125, 
139. 

Milton,  John,  on  books,  60. 

Moliere,  importance  to  historians,  49. 

Mommsen,  Theodor,  on  Gibbon,  11,  125; 
as  scientific  historian,  43. 

Money.     See  Finances. 

Monographs,  use  by  general  historians, 
22. 

Monroe,  James,  as  President,  207,  209. 

Monroe  Doctrine,  and  Philippines,  195; 
and  development  of  presidential  office, 
209. 

Montesquieu,  Gibbon  on,  119. 

Morison,  J.  A.  Cotter,  on  Gibbon,  131. 

Morley,  John,  on  Macaulay,  16,  38,  55; 
on  Cicero  and  Voltaire,  51. 

Morrill,  J.  S.,  and  Hayes's  New  York 
Custom-house  appointments,  255. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  and  framing  of  Con 
stitution,  204. 

Morse,  C.  F.,  on  feeling  in  Union  army 
towards  South  Carolina,  307. 

Motley,  J.  L.,  best  work,  68;  advice  to 
historians,  74,  75;  and  manuscript 
sources,  86,  91;  Bourne's  unfinished 
biography,  196. 

Nation,  as  historical  source,  95;  J.  D. 
Cox  as  contributor,  187;  circulation, 
270;  foundation,  273;  weekly  edition 
of  Evening  Post,  274.  See  also  God- 
kin. 

Necker,  Mme.     See  Curchod. 

Negro  suffrage,  opposition  of  J.  D.  Cox, 
186. 

Nerva,  as  "gray  emperor,"  127. 

"New  English  Dictionary,"  importance 
of  quotations  in,  55. 

New  York  Custom-house,  Hayes's  re 
forms  and  appointments,  254. 

New  York  Weekly  Tribune,  influence,  31, 
90,  91,  267.  See  also  Greeley. 

Newspapers,  as  historical  sources,  29-32, 
83-97 ;  use  by  Von  Hoist,  29 ;  as  regis 
ters  of  facts,  30,  86-89 ;  importance  for 
dates,  30,  87 ;  as  guide  of  public  opin 
ion,  31,  89-92;  power  of  New  York 
Weekly  Tribune,  31,  90,  91,267-269; 
qualities  of  evidence,  83,  84;  value  in 
American  history,  for  period  1850- 
1860,  85-92;  and  correction  of  logical 
assumptions,  87-89;  as  record  of 


Newspapers  —  Continued 

speeches  and  letters,  89 ;  value  of  par 
tisanship,  91 ;  value  of  Northern,  for 
Civil  War  period,  92,  93 ;  of  Southern, 
93;  laboriousness  of  research,  93; 
value  for  Reconstruction,  94;  canons 
of  use,  96 ;  as  fourth  estate,  96 ;  criti 
cisms  of  Presidents,  239.  See  also 
Nation. 

Niebuhr,  B.  G.,  on  Gibbon,  10,  109;  on 
training  of  historian,  29. 

North,  Sir  Thomas,  translation  of  Plu 
tarch,  1. 

Norton,  C.  E.,  on  Godkin,  270;  and 
foundation  of  The  Nation,  273,  274. 

Note-making  in  historical  work,  76. 

Nullification,  Jackson's  course,  210. 

"Official  Records  of  Union  and  Con 
federate  armies,"  value  as  historical 
source,  92. 

"Ohio  idea,"  259. 

Oliver,  J.  M.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 
313. 

Olmsted,  F.  L.,  Godkin  on  Southern 
books,  273;  interest  in  The  Nation, 
274;  on  importance  of  Godkin  to  it, 
275. 

Olney,  Richard,  draft  general  arbitration 
treaty,  226. 

Originality  in  history,  27-29,  34,  75. 

Oxford  University,  address  of  author  at, 
169. 


Pacific  Coast,  Goethe's  prophecy,  71. 

Packard,  S.  B.,  overthrow  of  govern 
ment,  248,  249. 

Palmerston,  Lord,  Spencer  Walpole's 
estimate,  164. 

Panama  Canal,  Goethe's  prophecy,  72. 

Paper  money.     See  Finances. 

Parkman,  Francis,  originality,  28;  best 
work,  68;  remuneration,  78;  national 
pride  in,  102;  and  religion,  131;  on 
The  Nation,  270,  295. 

Partisanship,  historical  value  of  news 
paper,  83,  91. 

Pascal,  Blaise,  influence  on  Gibbon,  119. 

Pasteur,  Louis,  biography,  59. 

Patriotism  in  historians,  22. 

Pericles,  funeral  oration,  18,  23. 

Philippines,  annexation  and  Monroe 
Doctrine,  195;  McKinley's  attitude, 
233;  Godkin's  attitude,  286. 

Physical  sciences,  and  history,  2;  and 
training  of  historian,  55-59. 


INDEX 


333 


Pierce,  E.  L.,  essay  on,  177-181;  bi 
ography  of  Sumner,  177-179;  as 
politician  and  citizen,  179,  181;  his 
toric  sense,  179;  character,  180;  in 
terest  in  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  181. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  as  President,  213. 

Pike,  J.  S.,  historical  value  of  newspaper 
articles,  31. 

Pittsburg,  railroad  riot  of  1877,  252,  253. 

Pliny  the  Younger,  on  Tacitus,  9. 

Plutarch,  North's  translation,  1;  on 
Thucydides,  19. 

Poetry,  and  history,  1. 

Politics,  Godkin  on  decline,  296,  297. 
See  also  Civil  service,  Congress,  Elec 
tions,  Newspapers,  Presidential  office, 
and  parties  by  name. 

Polk,  J.  K.,  as  President,  211. 

Polybius,  as  historian,  6. 

Popularity,  and    historical   writing,  44. 

Presidential  office,  essay  on,  203-241; 
flexibility  of  powers  and  duties,  204 ; 
under  Washington,  control  of  treaties, 
205-207;  John  Adams  to  J.  Q.  Adams, 
extension  of  power,  207-209;  and 
annexations,  208;  and  Monroe  Doc 
trine,  209;  under  Jackson,  era  of 
vulgarity,  spoils  system,  209-211; 
Van  Buren  to  Buchanan,  annexations 
and  slavery,  211-213;  period  of  weak 
ness,  213;  under  Lincoln,  war  power, 
213-216;  under  Johnson,  nadir,  216; 
and  cabinet  government,  217,  240, 
263;  under  Grant,  217-219,  262;  veto 
power,  219;  Kent  on  dangers  in  elec 
tions,  219;  contested  election  of  1876, 
219,  254;  under  Hayes,  220-222,  245- 
264;  under  Garfield,  civil  service  re 
form,  222 ;  under  Arthur,  222 ;  under 
Cleveland,  advance  in  power,  223- 
226;  under  Harrison,  226-228;  under 
McKinley,  229-234;  and  public  opin 
ion,  231-234;  character  of  Roosevelt, 
235;  business,  interruptions  and  their 
remedy,  236-239 ;  appointments,  num 
ber  of  presidential  offices,  236 ;  contact 
with  Congress,  237;  criticisms,  238- 
240;  success  of  system,  240-241. 

Pritchett,  H.  S.,  on  McKinley  and  Phil 
ippines,  233. 

Public  opinion,  newspapers  as  guide,  31, 
89-92;  backing  of  Lincoln's  extra- 
legal  actions,  215;  influence  on  Presi 
dents,  231-234. 

Puritans,  Macaulay  and  Gardiner  on 
character,  318. 


Pym,  John,  and  Revolution  of  1688, 
323. 

Railroad  riots,  1894,  Cleveland  and  use 
of  Federal  troops,  225;  1877,  cause, 
251;  strike  and  conflicts,  253;  use 
of  Federal  troops,  253;  social  alarm, 
254;  conduct  of  Hayes,  254. 

Ranke,  Leopold  von,  "England,"  143. 

Raymond,  H.  J.,  power  as  journalist,  90. 

Reading,  desultory,  64,  65,  199;  facility 
and  retention,  69;  note-making,  76. 

Reconstruction,  newspapers  as  historical 
source,  94,  95 ;  J.  D.  Cox's  opposition 
to  negro  suffrage,  186;  failure,  final 
withdrawal  of  troops,  248,  249;  atti 
tude  of  The  Nation,  282. 

Reed,  T.  B.,  and  power  of  Speaker,  227. 

Reflection  in  historical  work,  37. 

Reform  act  of  1832,  Lord  John  Russell's 
introduction,  162. 

Religion,  Gibbon  on,  under  Pagan  em 
pire,  126;  Gibbon's  treatment  of  early 
Christian  church,  131-133. 

Republican  party,  newspapers  as  record 
of  formation,  90;  and  sound  money, 
227,  257. 

Resumption  of  specie  payments,  oppo 
sition  and  success,  258,  259. 

Revolution  of  1688,  question  of  Crom 
well's  influence,  322,  323. 

Riots.     See  Railroad. 

Robertson,  William,  present-day  repu 
tation,  40,  111;  Gibbon  on,  122. 

Rome.     See  Gibbon,  Tacitus. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  character,  235; 
routine  as  President,  236,  238. 

Ropes,  J.  C.,  as  military  historian,  13. 

Round  Table,  character,  279. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  on  Gibbon  as  lover,  137. 

Russell,  Lord  John,  and  Reform  Act  of 
1832,  162;  Spencer  Waipole's  biog 
raphy,  162. 

Sainte-Beuve,  C.  A.,  style,  53;  on  desul 
tory  reading,  65;  on  biographies  of 
Goethe,  72;  as  critic,  72;  on  Gibbon, 
114,  123;  on  Tacitus,  128. 

Salisbury,  Lord,  Godkin  on,  290. 

Santa  Maria  in  Ara  Coeli,  Bambino,  107; 
connection  with  Gibbon,  107. 

Schofield,  J.  M.,  on  J.  D.  Cox,  185. 

Schouler,  William,  power  as  journalist, 
90. 

Schurz,  Carl,  on  history  as  profession,  78 ; 
criticism  of  Cleveland's  Venezuelan 
policy,  239;  in  Ohio  campaign  of 


334 


INDEX 


Schurz,  Carl  —  Continued 

1875,  246;  Secretary  of  Interior,  abil 
ity,  247 ;  with  Hayes  at  Harvard  com 
mencement,  251;  and  civil  service 
reform,  256;  social  character,  262; 
as  editor  of  Evening  Post,  274;  and 
greenback  inflation,  281. 

Scott,  Winfield,  presidential  campaign, 
86,  87. 

Sea-power,  Gibbon  on,  127. 

Senate.     See  Congress. 

Seward,  W.  H.,  and  arbitrary  arrests, 
214. 

Shakespeare,  William,  as  historian,  1,  7, 
22;  conciseness,  36;  and  study  of 
human  character,  67. 

Shaw,  Bernard,  on  reality  of  Shake 
speare's  characters,  67. 

Sheffield,  Lord,  sends  wine  to  Gibbon, 
135. 

Sherman,  John,  and  Silver  Bill  of  1878, 
221,  259,  260;  on  contact  of  President 
and  Congress,  237;  in  Ohio  campaign 
of  1875,  246;  Secretary  of  Treasury, 
ability,  247,  258;  refunding,  258; 
abused  for  depression,  specie  resump 
tion,  258,  259;  social  character,  263; 
and  greenback  inflation,  281. 

Sherman,  W.  T.,  and  Hayes's  suggestion 
of  war  portfolio  for  General  Johnston, 
247;  and  burning  of  Columbia,  301- 
313. 

Sicilian  expedition,  Thucydides's  ac 
count,  19,  61. 

Silver.     See  Finances. 

Slavery,  and  westward    expansion,  212. 

Source  material,  use  by  Thucydides  and 
Tacitus,  12-16;  modern,  20,  22; 
newspapers,  29-32,  83-97;  manu 
script,  85,  91,  143,  294. 

South  Carolina,  overthrow  of  carpet-bag 
government,  248;  feeling  of  Union 
army  towards,  306. 

Spanish  War,  newspapers  and  cause,  89 ; 
McKinley's  course,  233;  attitude  of 
Godkin,  286. 

Speaker  of  House  of  Representatives, 
power,  227. 

Spectator,  on  McKinley's  diplomacy,  234. 

Spedding,  James,  Gardiner  on,  145. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  aim  of  education, 
77;  on  age  as  factor  in  evidence,  85; 
Bryce  on,  293. 

Spoils  system.     See  Civil  service. 

Stael,  Madame  de,  parents,  137;  on 
Gibbon,  137  n. 

"Stalwarts,"  origin  of  name,  249. 


Stanton,  E.  M.,  and  arbitrary  arrests, 
214. 

Stephens,  H.  M.,  on  French  Revolution, 
155. 

Stone,  G.  A.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 
302,  310,  311. 

Story,  Joseph,  on  presidential  character, 
235. 

Stubbs,  William,  as  historian,  42,  69, 157. 

Suffrage,  Godkin  on  universal,  296.  See 
also  Negro. 

Sumner,  Charles,  style,  53. 

Switzerland,  Gibbon's  manuscript  his 
tory,  124. 

Tacitus,  rank  as  historian,  5;  char 
acteristics  as  historian,  8-10,  128; 
conciseness,  11,  16;  use  of  source 
material,  15;  as  contemporary  his 
torian,  17,  19,  111;  on  history,  43; 
importance  in  training  of  historian,  61 ; 
Gibbon  on,  116;  on  censure,  276. 

Taine,  H.  A.,  use  of  journals,  83. 

Tariff,  Cleveland's  attitude,  225; 
McKinley  Act,  227;  Dingley  Act,  229; 
McKinley's  change  of  opinion,  229- 
231 ;  The  Nation  and  protection,  282. 

Taylor,  Zachary,  as  President,  212. 

Texan  annexation,  211;  and  slavery, 
212. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  on  Macaulay,  38. 

Theodora,  Gibbon's  treatment,  133. 

Thompson,  R.  W.,  in  Hayes's  cabinet, 
247. 

Thucydides,  rank  as  historian,  5;  on 
history,  6 ;  characteristics  as  historian, 
6-8,  39,  128;  conciseness,  11,  14,  16, 
36;  use  of  personal  sources  material, 
12-14;  as  contemporary  historian, 
17,  111;  importance  in  training  of 
historian,  61. 

Thurman,  A.  G.,  and  greenback  inflation, 
281. 

Ticknor,  George,  pessimism,  288. 

Tilden,  S.  J.,  election  controversy,  203, 
219,  245. 

Tocqueville,  Alexis  de,  style,  65;  on 
presidential  office,  210. 

Trajan,  "wise  emperor,"  127. 

Treaty-making  power,  Jay  Treaty  as 
precedent,  206. 

Trent,  W.  P.,  on  burning  of  Columbia, 
302. 

Trevelyan,  Sir  G.  O.,  biography  of 
Macaulay,  64. 

Tyler,  John,  as  President,  211,  212. 

Tyndall,  John,  as  popular  scientist,  58. 


INDEX 


335 


Ulysses,  and  study  of  human  character, 
67. 

United  States,  Goethe's  prophecy  of  west 
ward  extension  and  Panama  Canal, 
71;  political  traditions,  208;  Godkin's 
early  optimism  and  later  pessimism 
concerning,  272,  284-290,  296;  God- 
kin  on  general  progress  and  political 
decline,  296.  See  also  American, 
Finances,  Newspapers,  Politics. 

Universities,  strife  after  exact  knowl 
edge,  101;  advantages  and  aim  of 
training,  102. 

Vallandigham  case,  Lincoln's  attitude, 
214. 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  as  President,  211. 

Venezuela-Guiana  boundary,  Cleveland's 
action,  225;  Godkin's  attitude,  285. 

Veto  power,  wisdom,  219. 

Voltaire,  importance  to  historians,  51 ; 
theatre  at  Lausanne,  121 ;  and  Gib 
bon,  121. 

Walker,  F.  A.,  career,  283;  The  Nation 
ignores  death  of,  283,  284. 

Walpole,  Sir  Spencer,  essay  on,  161-167; 
"England,"  161,  163,  164;  biography 
of  Lord  JohnRussell,  162;  knowledge  of 
men,  164;  of  continental  politics,  164; 
"Studies  in  Biography,"  164;  knowl 
edge  of  practical  politics,  165;  as 
man  of  affairs,  165;  style,  165;  visit 
to,  character,  165-167;  death,  167. 

War  power,  exemplification  by  Lincoln, 
213-216. 

Warner,  C.  D.,  on  originality  in  style,  27. 


Washington,  George,  as  President,  205- 

207;     prescience,    206;     as    political 

tradition,  208. 

Webb,  J.  W.,  power  as  journalist,  90. 
Webster,  Daniel,  basis  of  style,  53,  54; 

and  presidential  nomination  in  1852, 

86. 

Weed,  Thurlow,  power  as  journalist,  90. 
Wells,  H.  G.,  on  Boston,  138. 
Wentworth,     Thomas,     Macaulay     and 

Gardiner  on,  149. 
West   Virginia,    railroad   riots  of   1877, 

252. 
Western  Reserve  University,  lecture  by 

author  at,  47. 
Wheeler,  Joseph,  lootings  by  his  cavalry 

at  Columbia,  309. 

Whig  party,  nominations  in  1852,  86. 
Whitman,   Marcus,   Bourne's  essay  on, 

193. 
William  I  of  Germany,  "gray  emperor," 

127. 

William  II  of  Germany,  "traveling  em 
peror,"  127. 
Windom,    William,    and    Hayes's    New 

York     Custom-house     appointments, 

255. 

Wine,  Gibbon's  love  for,  135. 
Winthrop,  R.  C.,  on  E.  L.  Pierce,  179. 
Woods,  C.  R.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 

303,  311,  312. 
Woods,  W.  B.,  at  burning  of  Columbia, 

311. 
Woolsey,  T.  D.,  on  Thucydides,  39. 

Yale  University,  lecture  by  author  at, 
47. 


This  Index  was  made  for  me  by  D.  M.  Matteson. 


"  //  is  not  probable  that  we  shall  see  a  more  complete  or  better-balanced 
history  of  our  great  civil  war."  —  THE  NATION. 

HISTORY  OF  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

FROM   THE  COMPROMISE   OF   1850 

TO 

THE  FINAL   RESTORATION  OF  HOME  RULE 
IN   THE  SOUTH  IN  1877 

By  JAMES  FORD  RHODES 

Complete  in  seven  octavo  volumes,  attractively  bound  in  dark  blue 
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futile  attempt  to  avoid  conflict  by  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850, 
ending  with  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1854. 


I. 
1850-1854 

II. 
1854-1860 


The  second  volume  deals  with  the  stirring  events  which  followed  this 
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.of  the  then  newly  organized  Republican  party  in  the  election  of  Lin 
coln  in  1860. 

III.  The  third  volume  states  the  immediate  effect  upon  the  country  of  Lin- 
1860-1862     coin's  election;    covers  the  period  of  actual  secession;    the  dramatic 

opening  of  the  war;  the  sobering  defeat  of  Bull  Run;  Grant's  victory  at 
Donelson;  and  closes  with  the  battle  of  Shiloh  and  the  surrender  of 
New  Orleans. 

IV.  The  fourth  volume  follows  the  progress  of  the  war  in  vivid  discussions 
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1872-1877     Grab"  Act,  the  financial  panic  of  1873,  the  continued  Reconstruction, 

with  a  summing  up.  It  closes  with  an  account  of  the  presidential  cam 
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PRESS  COMMENTS  ON  THE 

History    of  the    United    States 

By  JAMES  FORD   RHODES 


By  Andrew  Mclaughlin,  in  "The  American  Historical 

Review  " 

VOL.  I.  "  Mr.  Rhodes  has  shown  unusual  skill  in  handling  re 

dundant  or  conflicting  testimony ;  and  he  has  shown  him 
self  a  historian  and  not  a  partisan.  .  .  .  He  is  writing  a 
political  and  social  history  with  rare  judgment,  accuracy, 
and  patience,  with  good  literary  skill,  and  with  sincerity 
and  honesty  of  purpose." 

From  "  The  New  York  Tribune  " 

"  A  work  like  this,  so  temperate  in  thought,  so  elevated 
in  style,  so  just  and  reasonable  in  exposition,  so  large  in 
comprehension  of  causes  and  effects,  and  so  tolerant  and 
truly  catholic  in  conclusions,  could  not  have  been  written 
if  the  momentous  period  under  consideration  had  not  been 
closed.  In  no  other  recent  contribution  to  the  study  of 
American  politics  is  there  so  true  a  sense  of  historical  per 
spective  as  in  these  volumes.  The  field  of  view  is  defi 
nitely  outlined  so  that  it  is  not  obscured  by  haze  and  mist 
on  the  outer  confines.  Within  it  events,  tendencies,  legis 
lation,  political  administrations,  and  the  men  who  have 
been  making  history  hand  over  hand,  appear  in  their 
rightful  relations. 

VOL.  II.  "  The  picture  is  perfect  in  proportion  and  in  composi 
tion.  It  is  a  complete  survey  of  a  period  that  is  finished. 
It  is  a  work  of  great  dignity  of  purpose,  and  is  rich  in  re 
sources  of  learning  and  political  and  moral  philosophy. 
The  style,  while  less  stately  and  rhetorical  than  that  of 
Bancroft,  is  direct,  trenchant,  often  epigrammatic,  and 
always  luminous.  Every  page  bears  evidence  of  pains 
taking  and  laborious  research.  Every  chapter  has  the 
impress  of  a  cultivated,  thoroughly  equipped  mind  and  of 
a  magnanimous,  tolerant  nature." 

2 


From  "  The  Athenaeum,"  London 

VOL.  II.  "Mr.  Rhodes  not  only  takes  great  pains,  but  he  has 
the  art  of  giving  pleasing  literary  expression  to  his  con 
clusions." 

From  "  The  Spectator,"  London 

"  Mr.  Rhodes 's  first  volume  deals  mainly  with  slavery  as 
an  institution  in  the  Southern  States,  and  the  various 
political  compromises  by  which  it  was  sought  to  prevent 
that  institution  from  becoming  the  cause  —  or  at  least  the 
excuse  —  for  disintegration  and  civil  war.  In  the  second 
we  seem  to  drift  helplessly  toward  the  conflict.  .  .  .  We 
have  indicated  that  one  of  Mr.  Rhodes's  chief  excellences 
as  a  literary  artist  is  his  power  of  characterization.  This 
is  admirably  illustrated  by  his  sketches  of  Charles  Sumner 
and  John  Brown.  .  .  .  These  volumes  are  something 
more  and  better  than  a  gallery  of  political  portraits.  But 
the  portraits  will,  from  their  being  so  well  executed,  remain 
longer  in  the  memory  than  anything  else." 

From  "  The  Saturday  Review,"  London 

VOL.  III.  "Mr.  Rhodes  is  not  merely  impartial  and  laborious, 
but  he  is  determined  that  his  research  and  the  judicial 
character  of  his  work  shall  be  patent  on  the  face  of  his 
writing.  He  almost  always  tells  us,  if  not  directly,  at  least 
by  implication,  the  process  by  which  he  arrives  at  his 
conclusions,  and  the  nature  of  the  conflicting  views  be 
tween  which  he  strikes  a  balance.  His  impartiality,  too, 
is  really  judicial,  and  never  results  from  missing  or  under 
rating  the  greatness  of  the  issues  wherewith  he  is  dealing. 
.  .  .  It  is  one  of  the  most  readable  works  on  the  subject 
which  it  has  been  our  fortune  to  meet." 

From  "  The  Daily  Chronicle,**  London 

"  Although  Mr.  Rhodes  is  long,  he  is  never  dull.     He 

can  tell  a  story;   he  can  expound  a  series  of  connected 

arguments  with  great  skill ;  he  can  pierce  to  the  heart  of 

his  subject  and  reveal  the  essential  purpose  of  the  political 

3 


VOL.  III.  struggle  of  the  period.  He  has  his  convictions,  which  are 
strong  and  sound ;  but  he  is  never,  so  far  as  we  have  ob 
served,  other  than  scrupulously  fair  all  round." 

From  "  The  Edinburgh  Review,"  Scotland 

"Mr.  Rhodes's  work  is  full,  intelligible,  and,  on  the 
whole,  impartial.  .  .  .  We  read  his  work  with  increasing 
respect  as  we  proceed.  We  acknowledge  the  thoroughness 
with  which  he  has  investigated  a  great  historical  episode, 
and  the  impartiality  with  which  he  has  approached  a  sub 
ject  which  stirred  his  fellow-countrymen  to  the  very  depths 
of  their  souls." 

From  "  The  Nation,"  New  York 

VOL.  IV.  "We  find  ourselves  following  with  unflagging  interest 
his  strong  synthesis  of  current  facts,  actions,  and  opin 
ions,  which  make  vivid  the  actual  life  of  the  time.  We 
breathe  the  atmosphere  of  the  period  itself,  and  share  the 
doubts,  the  fears,  and  the  deep  solicitude  of  the  actors  in 
it.  ...  The  historian  so  well  preserves  his  own  balance 
of  judicial  calmness,  and  his  full  knowledge  of  all  the 
facts  which  should  temper  and  modify  our  judgment  is  so 
well  at  his  command,  that  we  easily  yield  to  his  interpre 
tation  of  events  even  against  our  own  predilections.  Our 
consciousness  of  this  effect  upon  ourselves  goes  far  to 
make  us  believe  that  here  we  have  something  very  near  to 
what  time  will  prove  to  be  the  accepted  story  of  the  nation's 
great  struggle  for  self-preservation.  .  .  .  The  definite 
clearness  of  judgment  and  the  right-minded  fairness  of 
criticism  shown  in  each  chapter  support  our  earlier  judg 
ment  that  the  whole  book  will  be  a  trustworthy  guide  and 
a  friendly  companion  in  our  study  of  the  time,  as  indispen 
sable  to  those  whose  canons  of  political  judgments  may 
differ  from  the  author's  as  to  those  who  fully  accord  with 
him." 

From  "  The  Yale  Review  " 

"  For  the  conception  and  execution  of  the  task  in  this 
spirit,  Mr.  Rhodes  is  exceptionally  well  qualified." 
4 


By  W.  A.  Dunning,  in  "  The  American  Historical  Review  " 
VOL.  IV.  "  Mr.  Rhodes  has  now  attained  that  agreeable  position 
in  which  a  new  volume  of  his  history  is  distinctly  an 
*  event.'  The  position  has  its  responsibilities;  but  the 
present  volume  offers  abundant  evidence  that  the  author  is 
quite  capable  of  sustaining  them.  In  guiding  us  through 
the  central  heat  of  the  Civil  War,  he  never  loses  the  clear 
ness  of  head  and  the  calmness  of  spirit  with  which  he 
brought  us  up  to  the  conflagration." 

By  Frederick  Bancroft,  in  "  Harper's  Weekly  " 

"No  writer  of  United  States  history  has  ever  made 
such  thorough  use  of  all  the  materials  and  shown  such 
industry  and  good  judgment,  together  with  much  literary 
skill.  .  .  .  He  sees  with  extraordinary  clearness  the 
leading  characteristics  of  great  men.  His  descriptions 
of  the  heroes,  like  Lincoln,  Grant,  Sherman,  Sheridan, 
Lee,  and  Jackson,  are  realistic  and  impressive.  .  .  .  He 
shows  us  the  real  Abraham  Lincoln  as  no  one  else  has 
ever  done.  ...  It  greatly  enhances  the  permanent  value 
of  this  great  work,  which  is  sure  to  remain  a  standard." 

From  "  The  New  York  Tribune  " 

VOL.  V.  "  Mr.  Rhodes  is   painstaking  in  research,  showing  a 

full  acquaintance  with  the  sources  of  accurate  knowledge. 
He  has  capacity  for  weighing  evidence  and  grasping  the 
essential  truth  of  contemporary  impressions  or  reports  of 
eye-witnesses,  while  guarding  against  insufficient  induc 
tions,  balancing  them  with  less  vivid  official  records.  He 
has  charm  and  lucidity  of  style  and  a  rare  gift  for  quota 
tion,  not  the  trick  of  essayists  who  make  a  pastiche  of 
other  people's  clever  sayings,  but  the  faculty  of  seizing 
the  word  or  phrase  from  letter,  speech,  or  debate  which 
reflects  the  actual  movement  of  events  and  makes  his 
reader  the  participant  in  a  living  scene.  Above  all  he  is 
inflexibly  judicious,  without  causes  to  plead,  friends  to 
eulogize,  or  enemies  to  condemn,  but  with  one  sole  aim, 
the  truth." 

5 


From  "  The  Speaker,"  London 

VOL.  V.  "Masses  of  records,   pamphlets,   newspapers,   private 

letters,  have  been  ransacked  in  order  to  correct  the  false 
traditions  which  register  contemporary  misconceptions 
and  hallucinations  during  times  of  turmoil  and  passion. 
The  havoc  wrought  by  war  among  the  non-combatants 
has  never  been  described  with  more  convincing  fidelity 
than  in  the  painstaking  account  given  by  Dr.  Rhodes  of 
the  condition  of  the  South  during  1863  and  1864,  and 
his  rendering  of  events  during  the  presidency  of  Andrew 
Johnson  is  a  singularly  careful  attempt  to  assist  the  judg 
ment  of  citizens  in  understanding  the  most  tangled  bit  of 
modern  American  history." 

By  Wm.  Roscoe  Thayer,  in  "  The  Atlantic  Monthly  " 

"  In  selecting  and  presenting  evidence,  he  is  conspicu 
ously  fair  ;  and  his  plain  style  reassures  those  who  fear 
that  brilliance  means  untrustworthiness." 

By   Walter   L.    Fleming,    in    "The    Political    Science 
Quarterly" 

"  In  summing  up,  it  may  be  said  that  the  history  of 
Mr.  Rhodes,  while  as  fair  and  judicial  as  any  American 
can  now  make  it,  is  distinctly  from  the  Northern  stand 
point  ;  that  there  is  the  intent,  usually  successful,  to  meet 
the  other  side  with  fairness,  though  a  sympathetic  treat 
ment  of  both  sides  is  naturally  impossible  at  present.  .  .  . 
As  a  whole  the  book  is  far  superior  in  liberality  to  any 
thing  that  has  yet  been  written." 

"  The  New  York  Sun  " 

"The  volume  contains  626  pages,  not  one  of  them 
dull  or  unworthy  the  critical  attention  of  the  student  of 
history.  The  author's  grasp  of  detail  is  sure,  his  sense 
of  proportion  seldom,  if  ever,  at  fault;  his  judgment  of 
the  reader's  interest  in  a  subject  admirable ;  and  his 
impartiality  can  never  be  doubted.  His  style  is  ade 
quate,  never  lacking  in  vigor,  precision,  and  color.  No 
one  need  hesitate  to  hail  Mr.  Rhodes  as  one  of  the  great 
American  historians." 
6 


"  The  New  York  Times  " 

VOL.  V.  "  Since  Mr.  James  Ford  Rhodes  began  to  publish  his 
now  famous  'History  of  the  United  States  from  the 
Compromise  of  1850,'  twelve  years  have  elapsed,  years 
filled  with  events  in  the  art  and  science  of  history  writing; 
yet  nothing  has  lessened  the  interest  of  scholars  and  the 
general  public  in  this  important  work.  From  time  to  time 
new  instalments  have  been  quietly,  unostentatiously  given 
to  the  reading  world,  until  now  the  fifth  volume  is  before 
us.  It  was  a  great  undertaking  —  an  account  of  our 
momentous  Civil  War  and  its  consequences  on  American 
destiny.  The  first  volume  set  a  hitherto  unattained 
standard  of  judgment,  of  criticism,  of  fairness  to  all 
parties  concerned.  Not  a  single  chapter  nor  a  single 
paragraph  of  the  four  succeeding  ones  has  fallen  short 
of  the  high  promise  of  the  first." 

"  The  Brooklyn  Eagle  " 

VOL.  VI.  "  Throughout  the  sixth  volume,  which  covers  the  first 
administration  of  Grant,  and  his  reelection  in  1872,  our 
historian  never  loses  sight  of  the  prominent  place  which 
the  Reconstruction  policy  holds  in  the  history  of  the 
period.  .  .  .  The  judicious  and  fair-minded  way  in  which 
the  whole  subject  is  handled  by  Mr.  Rhodes  commands 
the  admiration  and  strengthens  the  confidence  of  the 
reader  as  to  the  historical  value  and  soundness  of  his 
conclusions." 

"  The  South  Atlantic  Quarterly  " 

VOL.  VII.  "  The  seventh  volume  deals  in  the  same  vivid  fashion 
with  the  Credit  Mobilier  and  Sanborn  Contract  scandals, 
the  panic  of  1873  and  the  consequent  financial  legislation, 
culminating  in  the  resumption  act  of  1875  and  the  inflation 
act  which  was  vetoed  by  Grant.  The  narrative  continues 
with  accounts  of  the  campaign  and  the  election  of  1874, 
with  the  success  of  the  Democratic  party  and  the  struggle 
of  the  South  for  good  government.  ...  No  better  ac 
count  has  ever  been  written  in  a  general  way  of  the 
struggle  then  going  on  in  the  South." 
7 


GENERAL  COMMENT 


From  "The  Herald,"  Boston,  Mass. 

"  The  work  is  thoroughly  admirable  in  point  of  style — clear,  concise, 
and  really  fascinating  in  its  narrative.  A  more  thoroughly  readable 
book  has  seldom  been  written  in  any  department  of  literature.  .  .  . 
We  commend  these  volumes  to  those  in  search  of  a  war  history,  as 
much  the  most  readable  and  interesting,  as  well  as  the  most  genuinely 
instructive,  of  anything  on  the  subject  that  has  yet  appeared.  It  will 
afford  a  revival  of  memories  to  the  older  class  of  readers,  and  a  value 
in  instruction  to  the  younger,  difficult  to  be  overestimated." 

By  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  in  "  Harper's  Magazine  " 

"  Written  with  a  freshness  of  style  which  will  appeal  even  to  those 
who  are  not  interested  in  its  subject.  Its  vivid  biographical  sketches 
portray  the  men  of  whom  they  treat.  It  shows  no  little  research,  and 
no  small  amount  of  literary  skill ;  it  is,  above  all,  honest  and  impartial." 

From  "  The  English  Historical  Review  " 

"  Without  a  touch  of  rhetoric  he  brings  out  in  full  force  the  moral 
and  economical  evils  of  slavery  as  it  existed  in  the  South,  its  baneful 
effect  on  domestic  life,  on  class  relations,  on  industry.  But  he  never 
fails  to  distinguish  with  singular  fairness  between  the  evil  of  a  system 
and  the  moral  responsibility  of  these  individuals  on  whom  the  main 
tenance  of  a  system  has  almost  of  necessity  devolved." 

From  "  The  Nation,"  New  York 

"There  is  the  same  abundant  and  almost  exhaustive  collation  of 
material,  the  same  simplicity  and  directness  of  method,  the  same  good 
judgment  in  the  selection  of  topics  for  full  treatment  or  for  sketchy 
notice,  the  same  calmness  of  temper  and  absence  of  passionate  par 
tisanship.  He  may  fairly  be  said  to  be  a  pupil  of  the  Gardiner  school 
and  to  have  made  the  great  English  historian  a  model  in  subordinat 
ing  the  literary  element  to  the  judicial,  and  in  compelling  his  readers 
to  accept  his  guidance  as  that  of  a  trustworthy  pilot  through  the  mazes 
of  conflicting  evidence  and  the  struggles  of  opposing  principles." 

From  "  The  Plain  Dealer,"  Cleveland 

"In  truth,  Mr.  Rhodes's  'History  of  the  United  States'  has  the 
fascination  of  a  novel,  while  it  has  been  accepted  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic  as  standing  in  the  very  front  rank  of  histories  of  the  period 
for  its  accuracy  and  sound  judgment,  as  well  as  its  pellucid  style." 

8 


From  "  The  Daily  News,"  London 

"  His  history,  the  work  of  an  acute  thinker  and  an  earnest  and 
liberal-minded  politician,  will  doubtless  take  rank  as  a  standard 
authority  on  the  period  with  which  it  deals." 

By  Wm.  G.  Brown,  in  "  The  American  Historical  Review  " 

"  It  is  not  unreasonable,  I  think,  to  claim  for  the  work  of  this 
American  historian  an  importance  not  quite  equalled  by  the  work  of 
any  of  his  contemporaries  who  are  writing  history  in  the  same  tongue. 
The  judgment  of  competent  critics  is  ...  fairly  unanimous,  and  the 
essence  of  their  consensus  is,  that  Mr.  Rhodes  tells  the  truth." 

By  John  T.  Morse,  in  "  The  Quarterly  Review  " 

"  Mr.  Rhodes's  '  History  of  the  United  States  '  is  marked  by  a  tone 
of  such  judicial  fairness  towards  both  men  and  measures  that  it 
finds  no  superior  since  the  days  of  Thucydides." 

ON  THE  PUBLICATION  OF  VOLUMES  VI  AND  VH 


From  "  The  Congregationalist " 

"  The  difficulty  of  maintaining  a  judicial  tone  in  recounting  and 
passing  judgment  upon  the  events  and  motives  of  such  recent  history 
Mr.  Rhodes  has  well  surmounted.  His  tone  is  grave  and  he  is 
studious  of  truth.  He  has  worked  through  the  abundant  sources  with 
an  explorer's  enthusiasm  and  a  scholar's  caution." 

From  "  The  Outlook  " 

"The  distinguishing  characteristics  of  this  work  are  noteworthy 
fairness,  sound  scholarship,  and  a  high  degree  of  narrative  skill. 
Looking  at  it  a  little  more  in  detail,  perhaps  the  most  striking  features 
are  the  ease  displayed  in  controlling  the  management  of  the  vast 
material  utilized  and  the  emphasis  placed  on  dramatis  personae.  For 
all  his  leisureliness,  it  cannot  be  said  —  unless  in  the  discussion  of 
the  attitude  taken  by  England  during  the  war  —  that  Mr.  Rhodes 
indulges  in  undue  disquisition  or  elaboration." 

From  "  The  Brooklyn  Eagle  " 

"  He  tells  the  story  so  well  that  the  reader  never  wearies,  while  the 
narrative  is  so  essentially  dramatic  in  the  very  nature  and  quality  of 
the  facts  which  make  up  the  story,  that  its  interest  never  flags  for  a 
moment.  Mr.  Rhodes's  work  will  stand  as  one  of  the  great  additions 
to  American  historical  literature.  He  was  fortunate  in  his  choice  of  a 
subject,  he  has  been  singularly  able  and  successful  in  the  way  in 
which  he  has  handled  his  theme." 

i  9 


From  "  The  London  Times  " 

"  Mr.  Rhodes  possesses  the  dramatic  instinct  in  no  inconsiderable 
degree,  with  the  faculty  to  seize  on  the  essential  points  of  interest  in 
a  narrative,  and  so  to  set  his  scene  and  group  his  characters  that  the 
persons  live  for  us  and  the  incidents  stand  out  clear  cut  and  full  of 
movement.  In  telling  the  story  of  a  nation  composed  of  a  number  of 
federated  States,  the  historian  is  necessarily  confronted  with  one 
inherent  difficulty,  in  that  the  events  in  those  several  States  by  no 
means  always  follow  the  same  course,  and  it  often  occurs  that  the 
threads  of  the  same  narrative  have  to  be  traced  separately  in  each. 
In  doing  this  there  is  constant  danger  of  losing  grip  of  the  unity  of 
the  narrative  as  a  whole,  and  of  overloading  it  with  detail.  With  this 
difficulty  Mr.  Rhodes  wrestles  with  more  than  usual  success." 

From  "  The  Dial " 

"  Giving  up  a  promising  business  career  and  devoting  oneself  to  the 
writing  of  history  is  an  occurrence  not  common  in  this  so-called  com 
mercial  age.  Such  in  brief  has  been  the  life  of  Dr.  James  Ford 
Rhodes,  who  has  devoted  nineteen  years  of  the  best  part  of  his  life  to 
a  period  of  our  history  but  little  more  extended  in  time.  The  loss  of 
the  business  world  has  been  one  of  immense  gain  to  the  world  of  his 
torical  literature.  The  word  'literature'  is  used  designedly  here. 
Possibly  Dr.  Rhodes 's  works  may  not  stand  a  rigid  application  of  all 
the  tests  invented  by  the  schoolmen  to  determine  what  is  literature, 
but  they  certainly  carry  the  stamp  of  verisimilitude  and  have  the  force 
necessary  to  lure  the  reader  on  and  invite  him  to  return." 

From  "  The  World  To-Day  " 

"  The  history  is  one  of  the  distinctly  great  achievements  of  the 
historical  scholarship  of  this  generation.  It  is  one  upon  which 
American  scholarship  may  well  challenge  comparison  with  the  best 
that  Europe  has  recently  produced." 

From  "  The  New  York  Evening  Post " 

"  Of  Mr.  Rhodes's  success  in  his  published  volumes  there  can  be 
only  one  opinion.  He  has  written  a  history  of  an  eventful,  even 
critical  period,  that  will  long  remain  a  standard;  and  he  has  to  a 
remarkable  degree  met  the  principal  requirements  of  modern  his 
torical  methods.  Great  industry  in  compiling  his  authorities,  marked 
capacity  for  weighing  them,  clear  arrangement  and  a  balanced  judg 
ment  of  men  and  events  —  such  qualities  have  resulted  in  a  series  of 
notable  volumes,  in  a  dispassionate  tone.  Never  attempting  the  florid 
or  eloquent,  he  never  falls  to  the  dull  or  turgid." 

10 


Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  in  "  Life  " 

"Mr.  Rhodes  deals  with  a  momentous  period  —  the  years  spanned 
by  the  Compromise  of  1850  and  the  rehabilitation  of  the  South  in  1877. 
An  attentive  reading  of  his  work,  now  completed  by  the  issue  of  the 
seventh  volume,  is  a  liberal  education.  Even  those  of  us  who  were 
actors  and  observers  in  1860-1865  can  learn  much  from  these  seven 
volumes;  those  of  us  who  were  born  after  the  close  of  the  war  can 
learn  everything.  There  is  a  kind  of  greatness  in  the  lucid  simplicity 
with  which  Mr.  Rhodes  has  handled  his  vast  and  complicated  material. 
His  impartiality,  insight,  and  authentic  knowledge  of  the  events  and 
characters  presented  on  the  broad  stage  of  his  narrative  give  his  work 
an  incomparable  and  lasting  value.  The  writer  brought  to  his  task 
too  high  a  mood  for  mere  partisanship.  Here  are  pages  to  stir  alike 
the  Northern  and  the  Southern  pulse.  I  was  about  to  say  that  his 
history  is  as  absorbing  as  a  play;  but  I  would  like  to  see  a  play  that 
is  half  so  absorbing." 

From  "  The  South  Atlantic  Quarterly  " 

"  In  his  first  five  volumes  Mr.  Rhodes  set  a  high  standard  for  him 
self,  viewing  his  work  from  whatever  standpoint  one  might.  His 
work  has  become  noted  for  its  completeness,  accuracy,  and  im 
partiality  ;  the  latter,  too,  in  treating  of  a  period  in  relation  to  which 
impartiality  has  been  only  a  rare  exception.  His  treatment  has 
always  been  thoroughly  scientific,  and  at  the  same  time,  the  result 
has  been  thoroughly  readable,  a  result,  by  the  way,  that  has  not 
always  been  attained  by  the  scientific  historical  writer  of  latter  days. 
The  last  two  volumes  do  not  depart  from  the  high  standard  set  by  the 
preceding  ones,  exacting  as  that  is.  They  are  calm,  judicious,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  sympathetic  in  their  treatment  of  those  vexed  and 
stormy  years  from  1866-1877." 

From  "  The  New  York  Sun  " 

"  By  deliberate  choice  Mr.  Rhodes  is  a  pupil  not  of  the  school  of 
Macaulay  and  Froude,  but  of  the  school  of  Stubbs  and  Gardiner. 
Gibbon  is  the  only  English  historian  who  has  succeeded  in  combining 
extreme  accuracy  with  extreme  attractiveness.  With  the  author  of 
the  work  before  us  attractiveness  was  only  a  secondary  object;  yet 
his  pages  are  neither  dull  nor  dry.  Not  satisfied  with  the  immense 
labor  expended  by  him  in  exploring  and  winnowing  a  vast  mass  of 
material,  he  has  striven  earnestly  and  successfully  to  present  his  con 
clusions  in  a  simple,  lucid,  and  engaging  way.  That  is  why  his  book 
is  sure  to  be  widely  read  while  his  right  to  a  high  place  among 
authorities  will  be  undisputed." 

ii 


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Book  SIip-lom-8,157(C'8107t.4)43S 


15336U 


Rhodes,  J.F. 

Historical  essays 


Call  Number: 


E173 
Rii7 


Ens 
R47 


153364 


